How did people clean their teeth during the Civil War and Earlier?
In 1780 a man by the name Mr. William Addis in England was sent to prison for causing a riot. With a good deal of free time for thinking, he decided that there must be a better way for people to clean their teeth, since rubbing a rag covered with a mixture of soot and salt over one’s teeth was hardly adequate for the job.
William took a bone and drilled small holes into it. He tied the bristles obtained from a guard into tufts, passed them through the holes and secured them with glue.
The first patent for a toothbrush was obtained in the United States in 1850 by H. N. Wadsworth. His brush had a bone handle with bored holes into which he placed Siberian Boar hair bristles. The Boar bristles, though, were still not the best because they retained bacteria and didn’t dry well.
In the 1930s natural bristles were replace with synthetic materials. On February 24, 1938, the first nylon bristle toothbrush went on sale.
In 2003 the Lemelson-MIT Invention Index name the toothbrush as the number one invention with which Americans cannot live, surpassing the automobile, computer, cell phone and microwave.
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