when was the first electric breast pump invented
Breast pump On June 20, 1854, the United States Patent Office issued Patent No. 11,135 to O.H. Needham for a breast pump.[1][2] Scientific American (1863) credits L.O. Colbin as the inventor and patent applicant of a breast pump.[3] In 1921-23, engineer and chess master Edward Lasker produced a mechanical breast pump that imitated an infant's sucking action and was regarded by physicians as a marked improvement on existing hand-operated breast pumps, which failed to remove all the milk from the breast.[4] The U.S. Patent Office issued U.S. Patent 1,644,257 for Lasker's breast pump.[5] In 1956 Einar Egnell published his groundbreaking work, "Viewpoints on what happens mechanically in the female breast during various methods of milk collection".[6] This article provided insight into the technical aspects of milk extraction from the breast. Many Egnell SMB breast pumps designed through this research are still in operation over 50 years after publication.