Page 26 - Bulletin Vol 27 No 3 - Sept. - Dec. 2022 Final 2_Neat

Member Article |Dentist As Inventors

By Gene Porcelli

The profession of Dentistry, by its very nature, requires dentists to be good problem solvers and excellent
with their hands. This expertise is not limited to the dental office. The following are just a few examples
of dentists who thought “outside the operatory” and invented items that influenced the world around
them.
Cotton candy was originally invented by a dentist, Dr. William Morrison, and a candy maker named John
C. Wharton. They introduced it at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. The machine melted sugar and used
forced air to push it through a wire screen to produce what at the time was called Fairy Floss. It wasn’t
until the 1920s that the name “cotton candy” was created by a dentist named Josef Lascaux (yes, another
one), in order to market a similar product. Unfortunately, only the name caught on, and not Lascaux’s
attempt to create a better cotton-candy-making machine than the one Morrison and Wharton used.
Could one consider this to be a case of insuring job security?
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An early 20 Century dentist built and flew the first American Monoplane. On December 9, 1909, Dr.
Henry Walden, a Garden City, NY dentist piloted the “Walden III” in Mineola. It was the first American
made single wing aircraft. He went on to build and sell several more advanced models. Three years later,
after several crashes, Walden gave up flying. When asked if he were frightened while he was “up there”
his reply was: “Frightened, hell every time I went up, I peed in my pants!”
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19 Century American dentist, Dr. Edward Maynard worked in the Baltimore and Washington D.C. areas
and was known to have treated the politicians of his day. But he is better known for his design of firearms.
He was awarded the first of his 23 firearms-related patents in 1845 for the design of a system that al-
lowed for partially automated priming of rifles to make reloading between firing more efficient. In 1851
he received a patent for his design of a breechloading rifle that used specialized cartridges, also of
Maynard’s design. Rifles featuring his breechloading design were featured in rifles used by soldiers for
both the Union and the Confederacy during the US Civil War.
Dr. Charles Edmund Kells, Jr. lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is likely best known as the
first dentist to take a dental x-ray of a living person in 1896. While his influence on dental imaging and di-
agnostics is widely known, he also made many other contributions to both dentistry and the public. He
was the first dentist to hire a female assistant. His practice was among the first to be powered with elec-
tricity and this influenced some of his other inventions including an electric dental unit, an electric air
compressor, an electric lighting system, and an electric suction system for aspirating fluids and irrigating
cavities. This suction system wound up being widely adopted by surgeons around the world. His inven-
tions that were not related to medical and dental practice include a fire extinguisher and alarm system, a
drinking fountain, and an electromagnetic clock.

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Yet another 19 Century dentist and steamboat engineer from Buffalo, New York, Dr. Alfred P. Southwick,
is best known as the inventor of the electric chair. His electric chair design was created in 1881 and was
first used to euthanize stray dogs at the Buffalo SPCA before being adopted as a method of capital punish-
ment in 1890. Rumors that he developed this for uncooperative patients are unfounded!

Sometimes dental inventors create things for outside the dental world while trying to help their patients.
Such was the case with Robert Schattner, DDS, who invented the sore throat rinse Chloraseptic in 1952
while trying to come up with a better post-op pain management option for extraction patients. Dr.

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26| Nassau County Dental Society ⬧ www.nassaudental.org