History
Bottles with hard spouts go back to prehistory. The first consisted of urns with two openings: one for pouring the liquid into the bottle and the other to be put in the baby's mouth. Soft teats of various materials were tried but were very difficult to clean. The invention of vulcanized rubber provided a material that was soft and could withstand the heat of sterilization. Elijah Pratt of New York patented the first rubber teat in 1845. It took until the 1900s before the technology was improved for a soft teat that could be considered as practical for use by mothers who were not breastfeeding.
In the UK in 1999, "the feeding and sterilising equipment sector ... stands at £49m. Sales of feeding bottles account for 39% of the market", or £19.1m.
Read more about this topic: Baby Bottle
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passé abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)