By Jeffrey Javier

It's about the size of a pencil and it's a common hygienic tool found in many bathrooms around the world. It's used at least twice a day and usually after meals. It's been around since anyone can remember and is something everyone uses at some point or another through life. It's the thing that keeps our smiles healthy and our teeth capable of tearing through that juicy piece of steak. It's the thing that we remember hearing from our parents growing up before we go to bed every night and when after we get up in the morning.

"Did you brush your teeth?"

We don't usually notice our toothbrush. Brushing our teeth becomes such a routine that we often don't remember doing it, unless we offend others with bad breath. Brushing is a routine much of us have felt accustomed to over the years. But what many of us don't know is how the toothbrush has helped clean teeth for more than 4,000 years.

According to the "Branches, Bristles and Batteries: Toothbrushes Through Time," the toothbrush was initially used between 2,500 and 1,800 BC by the Babylonians. The Babylonians used a wooden five or six inch stick and the brush was made of fiber. The early Muslims used the brush for prayers, fifteen minutes equaling seventy prayers. Their use was a lot different from today's dentist recommended two minutes to fight plaque and tooth decay.

"The Babylonian fiber brush is known as the initial point, the first step in the creation of the modern toothbrush," said Scott Swank, curator for the Dr. Samuel D. Harris National Museum of Dentistry.

Swank says the Babylonian fiber brush was one of many significant points in toothbrush history and the next most significant moment was in 1498, when the Chinese created the first toothbrush made of boar hair attached to bamboo.

"The Chinese toothbrush paved the way for the modern design of the toothbrush and there are still some companies today that make toothbrushes with boar hair as the bristles," Swank said.

The third most important moment in toothbrush history is the invention of the nylon bristle.

"The invention of nylon in the 1930s was the big blockbuster in the progression of the toothbrush." Swank said. "Nylon stayed cleaner than boar hair or fiber, and nylon has a longer shelf life."

A lot has changed since the years of boar hair bristles and bamboo handles. Many of today's brushes are made of plastic and so many rows of bristles pointing in an assortment of directions to scrub away plaque or to stimulate gums.

The language describing toothbrushes today has changed to reflect our high tech culture.

What were once bristles are now "gum stimulators" or "flexible micropulse bristles," according to the Oral-B Pulsar toothbrush description on the back of the box.

The toothbrush itself has also changed. One brush at a local store is no longer called a toothbrush, but an Oral-B CrossAction Power Max. It's a rechargeable battery brush with "CrissCross" bristles.

But one brush towered over the rest, the Oral-B Professional Care 9400 Triumph. This has a time display to tell you how much time was left in your brushing session, a battery charge tracker to measure your battery's life and an indicator to tell you when to change the brush head.

It also has four different brushing modes and 40,000 in-and-out pulsations and 8,800 side-to-side oscillations per minute. This toothbrush is definitely a new breed that's radically different from its boar hair bristled ancestor.

Rechargeable battery brushes seem to be the next wave for a new generation of people needing a cleaner, healthier mouth, but according to Swank, it will be a long time before people switch out their favorite manual toothbrush.

"A big factor in this is cost. Some people are not willing to pay for all the bells and whistles when they can get a manual toothbrush that can practically do the same thing," Swank said. "It will take a while before battery brushes become common in homes."

Swank is a traditionalist. Even with a storeroom full of new and old toothbrushes collected over the years, he still goes back to the manual toothbrush many of us first used in the past.

"I have a simple manual toothbrush with a normal set of bristles, nothing that has the weird angles or anything," Swank said. "It's just the basics with no combination of bristles."

Though many of today's toothbrushes are based on one simple design, there were many different trials that failed.

One of the failed brushes was one that rotated like a wheel with bristles attached.

"Imagine a car tire and replace the treads with bristles and the user would pull the brush across the teeth and the bristles would run along cleaning the teeth," Swank said.

Other failed ideas tried brushes that curved to mimic the curvature of the tooth, which would brush the lower and upper jaw all at the same time. There was also a brush that would try to clean all three surfaces at one time, Swank said.

"There are a lot of failed and a lot of successful designs," Swank said. "And there is always someone looking for a better mouth trap."

One of the more unique aspects of the toothbrush was how it progressed in different cultures through out time. From the Babylonians to the Chinese to the Egyptians, there was a common concern throughout the world for the health of one's teeth.

"There is a feeling of need to having a clean mouth that crosses cultural lines and all these different races and ethnicities had some way of cleaning teeth," Swank said. "There are all kinds of people involved in the design and development and it's impossible to pin responsibility on one person."

With all the different variations on the toothbrush, familiarity is the best way to pick out a toothbrush.

"The best kind of toothbrush is the one you're going to use," Swank said. "All brushes will clean your teeth and that alone is more critical than what the brush looks like."