HATCHING A GREAT IDEA
It was Tarnier who first got the idea for a baby incubator after seeing similar devices used in the zoo to help hatch baby chicks. But a lot of doctors back then weren’t too sold on the device’s effectiveness. It was another doctor called Pierre-constant Budin who took this early work to the next level. He began conducting successful research and in 1896 decided to display a prototype incubator at the Berlin World Fair. He even borrowed some premature babies from a Berlin hospital for the exhibit, and people gathered in amazement. Martin Couney, a German doctor, saw the display and realised that if hospitals wouldn’t pay for them, he could fund them as attractions at fairs. Crowds would pay to see babies in incubators, which in turn would keep them running. He toured America and even took the exhibition to the famous Coney Island in New York. By the 1940s hospitals began to use them.