Early NICU Equipment Photos

Dr. Ronald Coen (wrcmd@outlook.com) was kind enough to send a number of photos of early NICU equipment, with permission to post them here for educational purchases.

Above: An oxygen analyzer that was used in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. to measure incubator oxygen concentrations.

Above: A glass DeLee trap.

Above: YSI Tele-thermometer. It was used to measure the skin temperature of infants in an incubator. YSI stands for Yellow Springs Instrument Company.

Above: GBL Infant Resuscitator. GBL stands for Goddard; B is Bennet, and L is Lovelace. Roy Goddard is (was) a pediatric pulmonologist at the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He gave Dr. Coen the instrument along with the box it was contained in and an autographed instruction manual. More information can be found in Rachel McAdams’ thesis at https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/9654086.pdf.

Above: Breast milk collector, manufactured in Sweden.

Above: A baby bottle warmer that was used at UNM to keep bottles of milk warm. The second picture shows the heating coil.

Above: A scale that was used to weigh babies in an incubator. The infant was placed in a sling and the tie was fed upward through a hole and attached to the scale that sat on top of the incubator.

Above: The main body of a Baby Bird ventilator, one of the first true infant ventilators, and commonly used in NICUs in the 1970’s. Dr. Coen remarks: “We bought one of the first ones at the University of New Mexico in 1972 after an anesthesiologist came back from a meeting and told me about them. We used it on a baby that was failing on CPAP. I spoke to the father and said we had just gotten two of these in and had never used one. He told me to go ahead and use it. We literally read the directions off the side of the ventilator (I have pictures of that) and saved the baby’s life.”

Posted 12/18/2017.

Last Updated on 03/03/24