If you thought about how old the toothbrush was, what would your first guess be?
Mine was originally that it had to date back to sometime in the 19th century 鈥� I pictured some clean-freak Victorian dentist constructing the first toothbrush, probably an ornate brass-handled number.
In fact, it's a lot older than that.
One story that floats around the internet attributes the invention of toothbrushes to an 18th century London businessman named William Addis.
Addis had originally been in the paper trade, but in 1780 he was thrown into Newgate prison for starting a riot. (Why or how he started a riot does not seem to be recorded, much to my annoyance.) Supposedly, he had a eureka moment while trying to keep his teeth clean with salt, charcoal, and a wet cloth in lockup, and realized he could make a small brush that would do the job more efficiently.
He got out of prison, started a new company, and began cranking out brushes using stiff horse hair for the bristles. The company he founded still exists and was in his family until the 1990s.
The problem with that story is that the part about him being the first mass manufacturer of toothbrushes seems to be accurate.
The bit about the eureka moment is bunk.
There's physical and documentary evidence of toothbrushes going back hundreds of years, maybe more than a thousand, in China. Those seem to have been inspired by "chew sticks" that were used by many cultures across the world as a tooth cleaning method. A chew stick is exactly what it sounds like 鈥� a stick that's been chewed into bristles on one end, the chewing action (and maybe a little direct brushing) keeping the teeth clean.
The use of neem trees for chew sticks is ancient in India, and Buddhist monks there made tooth cleaning a ritual necessity, which led to its importance in China.
Once the Chinese had created recognizable toothbrushes using boar bristles, the idea spread west to Europe by the Middle Ages; there is documentary evidence of people purchasing hand-made toothbrushes in Britain as early as 1690.
What Addis brought to the toothbrush was mass production and marketing, and what makes for better marketing than a story about a bolt-from-the-blue idea?
One of the great myths we picked up during the age of mass industrialization, starting from around the late 1700s and running into the early 20th century, is that of the singular inventor-hero.
I'm sure we can think of a few examples, and some of them are even real. But most are myth-making.
Edison and the light bulb? Nope.
Edison (or rather, Edison and his army of technicians) worked to synthesize a century of prototypes and attempts by others into a viable, commercial product. The same process was at work in Britain, where Joseph Swan was doing the same thing 鈥� building on others research, refining it, and commercializing it. Swan was lighting Britain while Edison did the same in North America.
Invention is less singular than we suppose. Usually there are many people involved, even for something as simple as a toothbrush.
