Other forms: toothbrushes
When you clean your teeth, you use a toothbrush. Most toothbrushes are made of plastic, with soft bristles at one end for scrubbing your teeth.
Before the modern toothbrush was invented, people used things like sticks, feathers, bones, and porcupine quills to clean their teeth. Twigs with frayed ends, called "chew sticks," were the toothbrush's precursor, and they are still used in various parts of the world. The earliest toothbrushes were invented in China, and the first patent was awarded in 1857 in the U.S. for a toothbrush with a bone handle and boar's hair bristles.