- Sat Feb 28, 2004 8:15 pm
#4237
Build a better toothbrush or invent a better angle on the basic toothbrush and the world might well beat a path to your door. But FBIMan I don’t think your idea is going to do it. Remember Danny Kaye in “The Court Jester” being shaved with the blade of a battle axe in order to get the job done in a hurry? It has similarities with this triple-toothbrush idea I think. Let’s look at a couple of practical problems first. You would probably induce a retching response in many people by putting so large an object in the mouth. And you would lose almost all flexibility in your brushing action - to clean teeth properly you need to move the brush in a variety of directions so it cleans between the teeth and in the various indentations. All you would be able to do with this triple-toothbrush behemoth is drag it forwards and backwards.
But you do indirectly raise an important issue. Isn’t it time we moved tooth-cleaning technology forwards from about the fifth millenium BC to the twenty-first century? They were probably using toothbrushes in ancient Egypt. What we need is a hi-tech automatic miniature robotic device that you place onto one row of teeth - it automatically works its way along the row, using a series of tiny arms to clean and polish every surface of every tooth. (It would also use tiny hammers to tap each tooth in various places to test for sensitive spots. Should it hear an “Ouch!” it would go into a veritable frenzy of tapping in order to build up a detailed picture of the problem!) As soon as it comes to the end of one row of teeth it automatically switches to the other row. When it has finished it presents a report (this could be sent to your computer using Bluetooth) detailing the current state of your teeth, whether it encountered any decay, what food particles it found trapped between your teeth, whether you had eaten any foods detrimental to your teeth that day, when your next dental appointment should be, and whether your last dental bill is overdue.