Timeline of the Toothbrush
The toothbrush and its companions, from ancient tooth powders, chew sticks and the miswak through the Chinese bristle brush and William Addis to nylon bristles, fluoride toothpaste, electric and connected brushes, and fluoride toothpaste's listing as a WHO essential medicine in 2021.
- Category
- Medicine & Health
- Events
- 19 events 4th century – 2021
- Generated
- by claude-opus-5-5
4th century: Egyptian papyrus records a tooth-powder recipe
A Greek papyrus from Roman Egypt, identified in 2003 in a Vienna collection, gives a recipe for cleaning teeth from rock salt, mint, dried iris flower and pepper, crushed and mixed with saliva into a paste. It is often described as the oldest known toothpaste formula, though abrasive tooth powders were used across the ancient Mediterranean world well before it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toothpaste7th century: Islamic tradition commends the miswak
Hadith collections record the Prophet Muhammad recommending the siwak, or miswak, a twig usually cut from the Salvadora persica tree whose frayed end cleans the teeth, and its use spread with Islam across the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. The World Health Organization encouraged its use where customary in the mid-1980s, though a 2000 consensus report called for more research on its effects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miswak618 – 907: Bristle toothbrushes appear in China
Standard histories, including the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, credit China during the Tang dynasty with the first brushes made of stiff hog bristles set in bamboo or bone handles. Later Chinese sources mention shops selling toothbrushes in Song dynasty cities. The often-repeated claim that a Ming emperor "patented" the toothbrush on June 26, 1498 has no documentary support.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toothbrush~691: Yijing describes the Indian tooth-stick routine
The Chinese Buddhist monk Yijing, in a record of monastic practice sent home from Srivijaya after years in India, described monks chewing the end of a stick of "tooth wood" each morning before cleaning the teeth and tongue. Chewed twigs of many plant species, known in Sanskrit as dantakashtha, appear in early Buddhist and Ayurvedic texts and remain in use in parts of Africa and Asia; popular claims of Babylonian chew sticks around 3500 BCE are poorly sourced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teeth-cleaning_twig1690: Anthony Wood records buying a toothbrush
The Oxford antiquary Anthony Wood noted in his diary that he had bought a toothbrush from one J. Barret, the earliest identified use of the word in English. Bristle brushes had reached Europe from China during the 17th century; Europeans generally preferred softer horsehair to hog bristle, while many people still cleaned their teeth with rags, sponges or powders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toothbrush~1780: William Addis starts making toothbrushes in London
William Addis founded a London business that made bone-handled brushes with tufts of bristle wired into drilled holes, and it is often credited as the first to make toothbrushes on a commercial scale. Company tradition holds that he devised the brush in prison after a riot conviction; the story is unverified. The firm, later the maker of Wisdom toothbrushes, stayed in family hands until 1996.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Addis_(entrepreneur)1857: Wadsworth receives the first US toothbrush patent
H. N. Wadsworth of Washington, D.C., received US patent number 18,653, dated November 17 (the Library of Congress gives November 7), generally cited as the first American patent for a toothbrush. It claimed rows of bristles trimmed to a concave surface and a wedge-shaped back meant to reach around the molars; mass production of toothbrushes in the United States did not begin until the 1880s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toothbrush1880s: Florence Manufacturing launches the Pro-phy-lac-tic brush
The Florence Manufacturing Company of Florence, Massachusetts, began selling the Pro-phy-lac-tic toothbrush, based on a design by the New York dentist Meyer L. Rhein, with a curved handle and tufted end; sources date the launch between 1884 and 1888. One of the first American mass-produced toothbrushes, it was heavily advertised, and the firm renamed itself the Pro-Phy-Lac-Tic Brush Company in 1924.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-Phy-Lac-Tic_Brush_Company1892: Washington Sheffield puts toothpaste in a tube
Washington Sheffield, a dentist in New London, Connecticut, began selling his Dr. Sheffield's Creme Dentifrice in a collapsible metal tube, an idea his son reportedly took from artists' paint tubes in Paris. Toothpaste had until then been sold mostly as powder or in jars; Colgate followed with its tubed Ribbon Dental Cream in 1896.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Sheffield1938: Nylon bristles reach the market
On February 24, "Dr. West's Miracle-Tuft" toothbrush, sold by Weco Products of Chicago with DuPont's "Exton" nylon bristle, went on sale, the first commercial product to use nylon. Nylon dried faster and frayed less than boar bristle; after Weco's exclusive franchise ended in 1940 other makers adopted it, and synthetic bristles had largely displaced animal hair by the 1950s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon1948: Charles Bass promotes soft brushes and a gumline technique
Charles C. Bass, a former dean of the Tulane University School of Medicine who turned to dental research after retiring, advocated soft, evenly trimmed nylon brushes angled at about 45 degrees into the gumline with short strokes. The Bass technique, usually dated to his work of the late 1940s, became one of the methods most often taught by dentists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_C._Bass1950: Robert Hutson patents the brush that became Oral-B
The California periodontist Robert W. Hutson filed a design patent on January 13 for a soft nylon toothbrush, granted on October 24, and sold it under the name Oral-B; the first model, the Oral-B 60, was named for its number of tufts. The brand passed to Gillette in 1984 and, with Gillette, to Procter & Gamble in the mid-2000s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral-B1954: Philippe-Guy Woog develops the Broxodent electric toothbrush
In Switzerland, Philippe-Guy Woog developed a corded electric toothbrush for Broxo S.A., first intended for patients with limited dexterity or orthodontic braces; some sources give other dates for its origin. E. R. Squibb and Sons introduced it in the United States in 1960 as the Broxodent, and General Electric announced a rechargeable cordless model in 1961.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_toothbrush1955: Procter & Gamble tests Crest fluoride toothpaste
Developed with Procter & Gamble funding by Joseph Muhler and colleagues at Indiana University, Crest, with stannous fluoride, entered test markets in 1955 and national distribution in January 1956. After clinical trials, the American Dental Association's Council on Dental Therapeutics gave it provisional acceptance in 1960 and full acceptance in 1964, and fluoride toothpaste became the market norm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crest_(toothpaste)mid 1980s: Interplak rotary brush reaches home users
The Interplak, developed by Dental Research Corporation, was a rechargeable home brush whose rows of bristle tufts each spun, adjacent tufts turning in opposite directions; its later maker Conair dates the launch to 1985, while other accounts give 1987. Oscillating-rotating heads, later popularized by Braun and Oral-B, became one of the two main designs of powered toothbrush.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_toothbrush1992: Sonicare introduces the sonic toothbrush
Developed by David Giuliani with University of Washington professors David Engel and Roy Martin, the Sonicare, which vibrates its bristles at sonic frequencies, went on sale in 1992 from their company GEMTech, renamed Optiva in 1995. Philips acquired Optiva in 2000, and sonic vibration became the other main powered-brush design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonicare2001: Procter & Gamble buys the SpinBrush
John Osher and partners launched the SpinBrush, a battery-powered spinning toothbrush priced only a few dollars above a manual brush, through Midwestern stores in 1999, and sold it to Procter & Gamble in a deal announced in December 2000 and completed in 2001, for a reported $475 million. Marketed under the Crest brand, it brought powered brushing to the mass market; Procter & Gamble sold the line to Church & Dwight as a condition of its purchase of Gillette.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procter_%26_Gamble2014: Bluetooth toothbrushes link brushing to smartphones
The French startup Kolibree showed a toothbrush that tracked brushing time and coverage and reported to a phone app at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, and Oral-B announced its Bluetooth-connected SmartSeries in February, on sale in Germany that spring and the United States in June. App-connected brushes became a standard feature of premium powered models.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_toothbrush2021: WHO lists fluoride toothpaste as an essential medicine
The World Health Organization's Model List of Essential Medicines, updated on October 1, added fluoride toothpaste containing 1,000 to 1,500 parts per million fluoride in a new dental section, along with silver diamine fluoride and glass ionomer cement. The listing, aimed at the global burden of tooth decay, signals that governments should keep such products available and affordable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHO_Model_List_of_Essential_Medicines