Pasteur pipets or transfer pipets?

There are things that we take for granted. Maybe because we feel that they always existed. Some lab products that were major innovations when they were launched now disappear in our labs environment.  However like some communities living like we were a century ago, some lab users (actually many from what I can see) have either not been exposed to this transformation or have decided, for whatever reason, to simply ignore it.

I am referring to disposable pipets, labeled Pasteur pipettes then, now simply transfer pipets. Louis Pasteur, the famous French researcher in microbiology invented them in the 19^th century. Before, one had to pipet by mouth (I am old enough to remember doing this and aspirating some samples when there were not enough in the tube. Drawing air at the end caused an explosion in my mouth, not the best memory…) .

So Pasteur pipettes and their little yellow bulbs were a huge step ahead and took over the world. But they were not perfect. Still mad of glass, and a rather thin glass at the tip, they would often break leaving pieces in the sample and becoming a dangerous weapon. Shipping them required a ton of efforts to avoid breakage and to sterilize them,  one needed to use these funny looking metal cannisters because they were not sold sterile. In the 1940 blow, moulding of polyethylene enabled the production of a pipet with an integrated bulb. It eventually evolved into an extraordinary wide variety of shapes, sizes, volumes and conditioning including presterilized pipets individually wrapped.

We at Simport have followed suit and are offering these amazing little things we call Dropette® that will never break, not hurt anybody, do not need to be autoclaved and don’t need the elusive yellow bulb (it must have fallen off from my lab coat pocket when I bent forward). The only real reason left to not use these glass antiques is if you are pipetting organic solvents. The material transfer pipets are made of would dissolve. You can find our product offering here: https://www.simport.com/en/254-dropette-transfer-pipettes

So if you see somebody still working with a glass Pasteur pipet, feel free to tell him or her that Louis Pasteur himself would have for sure used these despite the loss of his name!