CONSIDER THE LOWLY TOOTHPICK IN OUR WORLD

It is a curious fact that the toothpick may have been our ancient ancestor’s first tool. From fossilized teeth that date to maybe 2 million years ago they have found evidence that a device or tool, like a toothpick, was used to pick food from between their teeth. There are many other theories about the grooves found between the fossil teeth but a majority of probers believe this. Professor Henry Petoski, who also wrote a very popular book about the pencil and how it changed our society in the west, wrote this 420 page book called “The Toothpick” and he tells us that down through the millennia there have been many versions of this implement: the ancient Chinese had such an implement, and the Greeks and Romans and Arabs and the oldest of Jewish sects too.

They were made from ivory and bone and metals of all kinds and glass and so many more materials. Some carried them on a chain around their necks, and others had them attached to their clothing. Wealthy men had gold toothpicks carried by their servants and Eastern Indians had an elaborate one inserted in their mouths before they were buried.

We fast forward some thousands of years to the time of George Washington, in 1745, who set down a set of “rules of civility” in which he specified that knives and forks were never to be used to pick the teeth at the table. Only a toothpick was to be used. The first mention of the making of wooden toothpicks in the colonies was of Charles Forster who had a toothpick factory, and they were making an astounding 200 million wooden ones each day. They used, as they do today, a particular kind of very hard Ash tree. The industry is very secretive about how they make their simple products. They are much like the button, pin and other similar industries. Interestingly many of these were and are located on the north east coast of North America. You will also find many makers of these in Japan and China and the middle east as well. There’s maybe billions of them still made each day and week, and when you think about it we need them as much as anything in our lives. So next time you go somewhere and pick up one of those flat or round toothpicks think of the history behind them.