Open mouth, apply battery-operated toothbrush – Loveland Reporter-Herald

Benjamin Franklin invented the electric toothbrush. yes it is true I read it on the internet.

One dreary day, while he was toying with his lightning thoughts, clouds gathered and it began to rain.

He said “aha” and attached a metal wire to this toothbrush and when lightning struck him, his toothbrush vibrated and he brushed his teeth.

No not at all I was just having fun with you.

My electrical engineering colleagues of the past would have said “Jim. this is impossible. How can he brush on a sunny day?

What electric toothbrush came to my mind today? The CEO and I just “invested” in a pair of matching electric toothbrushes. Apparently they only sell them in pairs, encouraging you to find a friend with similar dental hygiene needs if you’re single.

After three generations of dentists recommended it to me, I succumbed to the suggestion.

I have more crowns than the kingdom of England so I thought maybe it was worth the investment – you can buy Oral-BS plastic for a lifetime at the cost of just one set. And then you still have to replace the brush heads.

You should be aware, the directions advise, “do not use in the shower” (or it may turn out to be more exciting than you’d like).

It also suggests brushing your teeth for two minutes each time. Does he think I have nothing better to do (don’t answer him).

Well, I guess it’s better than chewing on Denta Bones; Even the ones with chlorophyll don’t taste good.

There’s more to electric toothbrushes than meets the eye (or teeth).

I didn’t know when we had the down payment on the obvious, but they are classified as power, sonic or ultrasonic according to the frequency of their movements. Their classification depends (perhaps another product for a later discussion) on whether they speed below or above the audible range (20–20,000 Hz or 2400–2,400,000 beats per minute).

I honestly don’t know how fast ours is; I could not give him time while brushing.

Ben Franklin misinformation aside (as should most stuff from the web), we come across the first recorded example of an electric toothbrush.

In 1937, Tomlinson Mosley filed a patent for the Motodent; I would have chosen some other name. It sounds like something that happened to your car in a parking lot.

His device had a rope attached to it and appears as though it would have to be held with both hands due to its size. It was not displayed when we bought ours.

Moseley may have cornered the market (except in areas where there was no electricity) with the Motodent as the next electric toothbrush did not appear until 1954.

It was invented in Switzerland by Dr. Philipp Guy Voog. He likes the meaning of “dent” so he names himself Broxodent – if it were a Swiss language it could mean something but it is just a little used surname. I don’t know why they didn’t call it Woogodent or maybe Dentowoog.

His device plugged into a standard wall socket and ran on line voltage.

After six years of practicing on the Swiss and other Europeans, the Broxo electric toothbrush was brought to America by ER Squibb & Sons Pharmaceuticals. For lack of a better name, Squibb & Kids kept Broxodent and marketed it under that name.

Somewhere in the dark corners of my Velcro mind I remember seeing it advertised on early television.

General Electric, which typically specialized in things that run on electricity, decided to squeeze out of market share in the early 1960s (yes, I said it). It introduced a cordless model with rechargeable NiCad (Nickel Cadmium, which costs less than dime cadmium) batteries.

It was portable if you were doing arm exercises. It was massive, about the size of a two-D-cell flashlight handle.

This model came with a charging stand (also portable if you have power).

Most units are sitting in a charger, which is not the best way to get maximum service life out of a NiCad battery.

And the first ones had a short life span. This was an issue if you lived off the battery because the batteries were sealed inside the device and couldn’t be swapped out. The device had to be discarded when the battery failed – after eating garlic pasta would be a bad time for failure.

Time passed and security personnel struggled to certify the Broxo’s original design; It was the 1990s and five decades after the product’s debut (lawyers must be drooling).

Competitors were grinding their teeth to gain market share (yes, another one) so better battery powered toothbrushes were available and recommended by dentists.

This has resulted in the CEO and I purchasing the product (financial support available). It’s called Sonicare (which means it can help my hearing issues) and is supposed to be very effective.

I’ve found it to be more time consuming and messier than my manual toothbrush (gold by day, blue by night). However, I’ll stick with it: straight teeth, crooked smile.