Tomorrow’s Tech Treepowered by Astra

Surgery & Medical Devices · Recorded milestone

Iron lung

Recorded year1928

Philip Drinker and Louis Shaw's negative-pressure respirator keeps polio patients breathing, the first practical life-support machine.

Explore this milestone on the interactive map

Built on

Led to

Sources & evidence

Dataset updated 2026-10-18. This individual record has not been separately re-reviewed.