Nursing Bottle
date: label: date made
content: ca. 1947
label: patent date
content: 1946-12-21
name: label: maker
content: Hygeia Nursing Bottle Company
notes: label: Description
content: Tapered glass bottle with red Applied Color Lettering (ACL) and graduated markings up to 8 ounces. Rubber nipple and glass cap covering nipple. The glass cap doubles as a graduated 2 oz. measuring cup. Paper insert printed in blue gives instructions, product information and pricing, and depicts an infant using the bottle. "PAT. 136888" embossed on bottle (patent issued December 21, 1946.) Howard H. Ganson, assignor to Hygeia Nursing Bottle Company, Inc., Buffalo, New York, patented this design for a tapered, cylindrical, wide-mouthed nursing bottle.
label: Description
content: Paper insert states: "Only Hygeia offers these four exclusive features: 1. Breast shaped nipple 2. Wide mouth easy to clean and fill 3. Red easy-to-read measuring scale 4. No-clog vent on nipple."
label: Description
content: Dr. William More Decker of Kingston, New York, established the Hygeia Nursing Bottle Company in the mid-1890s to manufacture his newly patented nursing bottle (No. 521,773, June 19, 1894). As claimed in the original patent, Decker’s design embodied “a perfect sanitary feeding device for infants, which will obviate disease that results from want of proper assimilation of food, and that will permit a correct administration of food in a perfectly clean condition.” The straight-walled, wide-mouthed bottle was a departure from earlier bottles which often had very narrow openings and used long sucking tubes which harbored bacteria. Subsequent patents followed – through the 1940s – as the Hygeia bottle evolved.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New York, Buffalo
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Medicine
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2012.0046.29
label: accession number
content: 2012.0046
label: catalog number
content: 2012.0046.29
label: patent number
content: USD136888S
objectType: label: Object Name
content: infant feeder
label: Object Name
content: infant feeder
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: glass (container material)
label: Physical Description
content: rubber (nipple material)
label: Physical Description
content: paper (label material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 2 1/2 in x 8 in x 2 1/2 in; 6.35 cm x 20.32 cm x 6.35 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 21 cm x 6 cm; 8 9/32 in x 2 3/8 in