Considering the Origins of Toothpaste
Most of us have grown up brushing our teeth twice a day using a dentist-recommended toothpaste. Who invented toothpaste never really enters the equation. Like many of the household items we take for granted, there wasn’t a single person who invented toothpaste. Rather, toothpaste has a long history that developed over centuries through trial and error and increased knowledge into the form that we know today.
Evidence suggests that the Chinese developed one of the earliest forms of toothpaste around 500 BC. But there is little knowledge of its contents. Ancient Egyptians and Persians, however, had a recipe for toothpaste that had as its main ingredients water, pumice, burnt eggshells and mashed oxen hooves.
In the 18th century, toothpaste was sold in the form of a powder, called tooth powder or dentifrice, which was mixed at home with water to form a paste. But this powder, containing such ingredients as brick dust and earthenware, was found to be too abrasive and caused more damage than benefits to teeth.
It wasn’t until the early 1800′s in America that modern toothpaste began to take its form, with a dentist named Peabody adding soap to the toothpaste to achieve the foaming effect that we’re all familiar with. And in the mid 1850′s, John Harris thought adding chalk was the miracle ingredient. Near the end of the century, Colgate became the first company to mass produce toothpaste.
If there were a candidate for being the one who invented toothpaste, at least in the form as we know it today, it would be Dr. Washington Sheffield. In 1892, he began selling his toothpaste in a tube. Recognizing the public appeal of a tube over jar, Colgate soon followed selling its own product in a tube. The rest, as they say, is history.
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