The forerunner of the modern bristle toothbrush is generally believed to have originated in fifteenth- century China. A Chinese encyclopedia dating to 1498 describes the short, coarse bristles from the neck of a Siberian wild boar being embedded in a handle made from animal bone, which was then used to clean the teeth. In the seventeenth century, Chinese traders took the brush to Europe, where its popularity flourished despite boar hairs being considered too rough for sensitive European gums. Softer horsehair bristles were seen as an alternative, although boar bristles remained the most common fiber.
The toothbrush was not humankind's first attempt at dental hygiene. "Toothsticks" dating back to 3000 B.C.E. have been uncovered during excavations of Pharaonic tombs in Egypt. These are lengths of frayed twigs or fibrous wood from shrubs, used to-clean between the teeth and freshen the breath. "Chewing sticks" made from aromatic shrubs for oral hygiene and to freshen the breath were also used by the Chinese in the sixteenth century.
The first mass-produced toothbrush was designed and marketed by the English inventor William Addis in 1780 using boar hairs and swine bristles attached to the end of a downsized cow's thigh bone. More geometric designs began to appear in the mid-1840s when bristles first began to be aligned in rows. Natural bristles continued to be used up until the invention of nylon by Dupontde Nemours in 1938. The world's first electric toothbrush appeared in 1939.
The toothbrush is one of the oldest implements still used by humanity, regularly finishing above more fancied inventions—such as the car and the personal computer—on people's lists of the things they simply could not do without.
