We were talking about feeding babies, and when the practise of using a pump to express milk originated.
The first patent for a breast pump was filed in 1854 by Orwell Needham in New York. The pump was made of a rubber cup connected to a glass pipe in which there was a hole. A mother would control the vacuum effect with her finger. A flexible tube connected the glass pipe back to a bellows fitted in a box.
The goal was to mimic the sensation of a nursing baby.