The First Official Breast Pump Patent: What Orwell H. Needham Built in 1854
By the middle of the 19th century, the breast pump had existed in various forms for over two thousand years. Clay pots, glass sucking vessels, pipe-shaped devices, all had been used across cultures and centuries to solve the same fundamental problem. But none of them had ever been formally patented.
That changed on June 20, 1854.
The man and the patent
On June 20, 1854, the United States Patent Office issued Patent No. 11,135 to O.H. Needham for a breast pump. His full name was Orwell H. Needham, and he was based in New York City. The patent is publicly available through Google Patents and makes for genuinely interesting reading.
Source: Bodily, Breastfeeding Timeline.
What he built
Needham's breast pump included flanges made of flexible rubber to ease the discomfort normally experienced with the glass flanges of conventional breast pumps at the time. The pump used a bellows to pump air, fitted into a box which was also intended to store the breastshields when not in use, and used flexible rubber tubing to connect the breastshields to the box.
The full apparatus consisted of three connected parts: a hand-operated bellows pump that generated the suction, a flexible rubber tube that carried that suction away from the pump mechanism, and a shield assembly that sat against the breast. The shield had a glass reservoir for collecting milk attached to a short pipe, with the rubber nipple shield at the end.
Source: Mothers' Milk Bank Northeast, A History of Breastfeeding Support and Advocacy.
The key innovation: rubber
Every breast pump device before Needham used glass or ceramic directly against the skin. Glass is rigid, unyielding, and pressed against engorged or sensitive breast tissue it was frequently painful and could restrict blood flow to the very area it was trying to help.
Needham understood this problem and addressed it directly in the patent text. The flexible india rubber shield, he wrote, has the advantage of softness and elasticity, by which a great degree of pain and irritation caused by the use of glass is avoided in cases of sore nipples or inflamed parts. He also noted that the rubber shield would not act as a ligature on the lacteal vessels the way a glass shield could.
He then went further, describing the effect of the rubber shield properly managed.
"The sensation produced upon the nipple and breast is exactly similar to those produced by a sucking child, the shield collapsing down upon the nipple like the pressure of the child's tongue."
O.H. Needham, US Patent No. 11,135, 1854.
That sentence, written in an official US government patent document in 1854, is a remarkable piece of history.
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The other innovation: independence
The patent also specifies something that had never been a design goal before. Needham writes that the pump is designed so that the patient can operate it herself and regulate the action in a manner never before effected.
For two thousand years, expressing milk had required help, significant effort, or the kind of sustained oral suction that was awkward and exhausting. The guttus needed water. The sucking glass needed the mother to apply suction with her own mouth. The pipe devices required both hands and sustained effort.
Needham's bellows pump, connected by a flexible tube, meant the mother could operate it with one hand while doing something else with the other. Independence was, for the first time, built into the design.
Needham started with rubber. We perfected it with silicone.
In 1854, swapping glass for rubber was revolutionary. Today, our Cushy Silicone Flanges carry that same idea forward: a soft, flexible shield that yields to your body instead of fighting it.
Shop Cushy FlangesWhat came next
The first patented breast pump devices were primarily used by physicians to relieve engorgement or feed infants who could not latch, and they were a far cry from today's comfortable, efficient models. Their use was episodic, aimed at solving an acute problem like a blocked duct, rather than as a tool for routine milk extraction and storage.
Source: EmmaWell, A Brief History of Baby Feeding.
The patent opened a door. Within a decade, other inventors were filing their own improvements. The breast pump had officially entered the industrial age.
The dairy cow and the pediatricians
Next week: the man who watched dairy cows being milked and decided to apply the same mechanical principle to human mothers, and the pediatricians who tried to stop him.
