Pacifiers: 60 Years of Success
Happy Birthday: The modern pacifier (binkie in the US, dummy in the UK) is celebrating it’s 60th birthday this year. Although there is a long history of parents giving their children items to suck on in order to comfort them, it wasn’t until 1959 that two German dentists invented it’s standard appearance as we know it: it has a latex or silicone teat, a moth shield, and a handle. The mouth shield and/or the handle is large enough to avoid the danger of the child choking on it or swallowing it.
The dentists’ concern was with the many problems they had to deal with: deformations or caries. They developed a baby comforter that resembled a mothers’s breast. They used some of the most advanced materials at that time (soft latex), and got a patent for it in 1959.
Pacifiers were a bit success in the years to come. There is also a range of adult-sized pacifiers, consisting of a standard baby pacifier guard but a larger, wider nipple, are used by people who snore or by members of the AB community. The nipples are often referred to as NUK5s, after the NUK brand of baby pacifiers manufactured by the German company MAPA Gmbh. They are sold under the name NUK Medicpro L or NUK Size 5.
