Nursing Bra - History

History

The first US patent for a bra was granted in 1913 to Mary Phelps Jacob. Her invention is the most widely recognized as the predecessor to the modern bra and consequently the nursing bra.

In October 1932, the S.H. Camp and Company correlated breast size and the degree they sag to letters of the alphabet, A, B, C, and D. Camp's advertising featured letter-labeled profiles of breasts in the February 1933 issue of Corset and Underwear Review. These procedures were only designed to help women with the then-standard sizes A through D up to a size 38 band size and were not intended to be used for larger-breasted women. In 1937, Warner began to feature cup sizing in its products. Other companies like the Model and Fay-Miss (renamed in 1935 as the Bali Brassiere Company) also began to offer A, B, C and D cups in the late 1930s. Catalog companies continued to use the designations Small, Medium and Large through the 1940s. In the 1930s, Dunlop chemists were able to reliably transform rubber latex into elastic thread. Man-made fibres were quickly adopted by the industry because of their easy-care properties. Since a brassiere must be laundered frequently, this was of great importance. In 1937, Warners added cup sizes (A, B, C and D) to their product line, and other manufacturers gradually followed, but Britain did not take up the American standard until the 1950s. Maidenform introduced brassieres with seamless cups in 1933, but resisted using cup sizes for its products until 1949.