Incubators – The Brooklyn Rail
The origins of this weird word trace back to the seventeenth century, when “incubation” meant “to sit on eggs to hatch them” and was later used to name a technology that artificially stimulated hatching. Incubators became a medical innovation when Stéphane Tarnier, having been inspired by seeing one in a zoo, invented the incubator for premature babies.
Source: brooklynrail.org