The fuller story
Needham’s patent reads like a recipe for a parlor instrument. “A bellows or other convenient formed air pump,” it begins, “fitted into a box.” A flexible tube runs from the bellows to a glass pipe, and the business end is “an india rubber cup made to fit over the nipple,” soft and yielding. The user controls the suction by covering a small hole in the glass with a finger. The patent promises sensations “exactly similar to those produced by a sucking child.”
Was it really the first? It’s the one most often cited, but even that’s argued over: the historical record also credits other early American inventors. And people had been relieving full breasts long before anyone thought to patent the job. The Science Museum Group in Britain holds an 18th-century glass “breast reliever,” possibly Venetian, with a long spout, made for a woman to use on herself.
From there the story runs through rubber bulbs, hospital pumps and finally the quiet electric pumps that fit in a bag. The goal never changed. Every one of them is trying to do what a baby does.
Why it matters
The book has fun with this one: Needham’s pump looked more like something for the fireplace than a tool for intimacy and nurturing. But read the patent again and you’ll find the inventor knew exactly what he was up against. The best he could promise was an imitation of a mouth.
The book’s key page puts it in a line, under the Hands mark: the first tool was always this one. Pumps have their place, and the guide covers them, but nothing has improved on the original: a willing mouth, warm hands and time.
