Aah, Autumn, when the young journalist's heart turns to thoughts of, "Wait, how exactly did we become a world where people are mailing each other breastmilk after meeting on the internet? I bet I can get a 1,200-word backgrounder out of this!"
And thus the brief history of breast pumps, as told through a patent search and old-timey newspaper archive dive, is born.
Which is brief because it leaves out anything between 1925 and 2008, TKTKTK including all waves of feminism, the rise of Big Formula and its associated backlash, women in the workplace and their associated backlash, and basically everything that actually contributes to the reality of breast pumping today.
A Brief History of Breast Pumps [theatlantic]
I guess "brief" provides cover for omissions.