The 5 Year Engineering Journey to a toothbrush?!

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That title might lead those with certain proclivities to think incorrectly about the subject of this episode. In fact, in this narrative-style episode, we look at the invention of an entirely new category of toothbrush that happened back in the early 1990's. 

It may be easy to see this particular toothbrush in a store and think nothing of it, but that's overlooking the 5 year journey that it took to commercialize it. Would you risk committing 5 years of your life to delivering a toothbrush that perhaps no one would want? No?

Well one man did. 

This story contains themes of:

1. Finding the right person or people

2. Solving your own problem

3. Doing what matters to your customers, so that they fight for you

A toothbrush may never match the grandness of the Eiffel Tower, or the prestige of getting to build the White City as described in other episodes, but this one is important because this kind of idea is illustrative of what most engineers should be looking for: a problem they have, that they can apply their skills to deliver, while at the same time needing to stretch themselves into something bigger in order to handle all of the challenges that success comes with. 

I like this story and I hope you will too. 

Thanks for listening to The Engineering Passion Express,

Brandon Donnelly

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The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering. 

If you are a conference organizer and are looking for an engineering or scientific speaker to inspire or educate in a keynote presentation, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find my profile below. 

Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome to the Engineering Passion Express.
I'm your host, Brandon Donnelly,and today we're going to talk
about the story of a toothbrush,but not just any toothbrush, a
very special toothbrush, onethat I've used for years and
that you likely have overlookedand have never thought about the
invention of.

(00:20):
The story begins in aperiodontist's office in
Seattle, sometime in themid-1980s.
There's rain on the windows,soft gray light, the kind that
never quite decides if it'smorning or afternoon.
Inside the decor is beigecarpet, laminated wood trim,
plastic plants that haven'tmoved in years, and a faint

(00:41):
antiseptic smell mingles withthe sweet bite of fluoride
varnish.
The equipment hums with ananalog whirr, motor suction
drills, machines built beforethe microchip.
And sitting in the chair is aman in a light blue Oxford shirt
with a pattern that resemblessomething like graph paper.

(01:04):
His elbows on the armrest,obvious that the shirt is
thinner around the elbows due tobeing worn so much, likely
because it's his favorite.
And while he's sitting therewaiting for the periodontus to
come in, he's wondering why hehas to be there at all.
But then the periodontist doescome in and gives him the bad

(01:26):
news.
He's got gum disease.
The bleeding on his gums comesfrom bacteria that turns to
plaque, which turns to a harderversion called tartar, which
then infects your gums andcauses the bleeding.
This isn't the kind of news thatanybody ever wants to hear.
And out in the world, there aretwo kinds of professionals.

(01:51):
There's one like theperiodontist that just delivered
the bad news that says, you'vereally got to take care of
yourself.
You have to do a better job.
The methods that you're usingaren't enough, and you need to
put in larger personal efforts.
And there's a second type ofprofessional out there, one that

(02:11):
says, maybe the existing methodsaren't working.
Maybe it's not all on personalresponsibility, but instead it's
on creating a better system thatpeople can use and get far
better results.
And over at the University ofWashington, there's a professor

(02:33):
just like the latter of thosetwo professionals.
His name is Dr.
David Engel, and he knew, likemost persistent problems, there
is a root cause to everything.
Letting them persist bycontinuing to use existing
methods often does no one anygood.

(02:54):
He spent his time as an academicresearcher trying to improve
oral hygiene.
Until then, oral hygiene wasbuilt on three principles people
having access to the tools, inthis case, toothbrushes, which
at the time in the UnitedStates, there's really nobody
that couldn't get a toothbrush.

(03:17):
Number two, people needed tohave access to knowledge of good
brushing habits.
This usually came from yourdentist, or maybe your school
did some sort of hygiene class,and that gave you the idea of
the sort of habits you needed tohave.
But maybe if you went to apoorer school or one with a less

(03:40):
rigorous curriculum, or youdidn't have access to a dentist,
you may not know these topics.
And since we didn't have theinternet, it wasn't as
widespread.
It wasn't something you couldfind on your own.
The final piece of the puzzlewas that people have to have the
time and the will to apply thesetools and best practices to get

(04:02):
the desired result.
The problem is, what if havingall of that, the problem still
persists?
That's when better methods needto be found.
And those better methods arewhat Dr.
Engel was chasing.
It's what researchers do, andmore importantly, it's what

(04:23):
innovators do.
Remember, Dr.
Engel, sitting in his office,was thinking about root causes.
That's a dental joke.
And he was thinking the same asthe periodontist: that bacteria
becomes plaque, plaque becomestartar, tartar becomes infection

(04:44):
and bleeding.
Stopping the bacteria stops thechain.
And what about stopping thebacteria?
They are so tiny, they can slipbetween the bristles of your
toothbrush.
At that microscopic scale, theycan hold on tight.

(05:05):
People can harbor from 32,000 ina healthy mouth up to 20 billion
in an unhygienic mouth with overa thousand different species of
bacteria.
It's estimated that eachmilligram of plaque contains 100
million of them.
And most are between 50 to 200times thinner than a human hair.

(05:32):
Think about that scale.
Toothpaste is made of tinyabrasive particles, often of
silica, calcium carbonate, orhydrated alumina.
If you rub it between yourfingers, the toothpaste will
just feel like a fine sand.

(05:53):
And while this is small to us,to the oral bacteria, they are
massive rocks, boulders really.
And many bacteria can still hidebetween these and remain after
the flood of the mouth rinsewashes the boulders away.
And Dr.
Engel was thinking about thiswhile also knowing at the same

(06:17):
time of some recent electrictoothbrushes that increase brush
strokes and were proving moreeffective than traditional
brushing.
Those electric toothbrushes madesense because traditional
brushing is around 150 strokesper minute.
An electric toothbrush of thetime could increase that up to

(06:38):
maybe 2,000 strokes per minute,which is a significant increase
in the amount of tooth surfacethat's being brushed for two
minutes of brushing.
All else being equal betweentraditional brush between
traditional brushing and anelectric toothbrush with

(06:59):
increased brush strokes, itmakes sense that the
effectiveness would beincreased.
But thinking about scale, whatif you had a brush that brushed
20,000 strokes per minute?
What would that do?
And how would that even be done?
At some point that soundsabsurd.

(07:20):
Because if you had big strokeshappening at 20,000 strokes per
minute, you would disintegrateyour mouth.
But what if you had smallerstrokes happening much faster to
the point that you're vibratingyour teeth?
And the vibrations cause thestuff to move and shake and
release.
That's what had Dr.

(07:42):
Engel thinking.
And luckily, Dr.
Engel had a colleague, Dr.
Roy Martin, in thebioengineering faculty.
Dr.
Martin had been working withcrystals, particular
piezoelectric transducers.
A naturally occurring version ofthis is quartz.
These piezzos or PETs takemechanical vibrations and

(08:04):
convert them to electricity.
But they can also work inreverse, electricity to
vibration.
Working together, Dr.
Engel and Dr.
Martin found their prototypetoothbrush drastically
increasing effectiveness beyondanything in the market.
But everything about that wasimpractical commercially.

(08:29):
We're talking about the 1980s.
The internet didn't exist, atleast not how we know it today.
Instead, it was the heyday oftrade shows and conferences.
To find what you were lookingfor, you would go and present
and meet with people.
Academics presented atconferences hoping other

(08:50):
academics would add opinions orbuild on their work or that a
company would pick up on theirresearch with a commercial
application.
In this environment, Dr.
Engel and Dr.
Martin are presenting their workon gum disease prevention
through better teeth cleaningvia ultrasonic brushing.
They present their works onusing piezos to create the

(09:12):
highest strokes per minutetoothbrush in existence.
However, they illustrateproblems with the size of
current piezos, with safety frombeing electrocuted, and other
commercialization issues.
All of that didn't matter at allto a man in the audience wearing

(09:33):
a light blue Oxford shirt thatlooked a little like graph paper
with the elbows slightly wornout, likely from being his
favorite.
This man was in awe.
He understood the challengesthey mentioned because he dealt
with them every day.
Bringing products to market washis job.

(09:54):
He was David Giuliani, aHewlett-Packard engineer.
David himself was the targetaudience, and he was the
solution to the doctor'scommercialization problems.
However, Hewlett-Packard didn'tmake toothbrushes.
They would need a company oftheir own and capital resources.

(10:16):
And that would mean taking aleap of faith, becoming an
entrepreneur, and foregoing thesafety and stability of a job.
But what else could he do?
Did he want to keep seeing hisperiodontus for the rest of his
life?
No.
And he bet that other patientsdidn't either.
And that began the five-yearjourney.

(10:40):
A journey made up ofmanufacturing challenges,
regulatory approvals, anddentist skepticism.
Most inventors imagine this willsell itself.
But Giuliani had been around theblock and knew that wasn't true.
Existing manufacturerscontrolled cells controlled

(11:01):
shelf space.
Early investors wanted to knowwho will buy a$50 toothbrush.
That's like$150 today.
And while this category existsin the modern era, it didn't
back then.
So Giuliani had to overcomethese objections with a

(11:22):
combination of optimism,resilience, and a large dose of
intellect.
The toothbrush over time, soGiuliani had to overcome these
objections with a combination ofoptimism, resilience, and a
large dose of intellect.
The toothbrush over time becamea health device in his stories.

(11:47):
The idea of vibrations in yourmouth morphed into sonic
cleaning.
And over time he realized he hadto make it clear that this was
not an incremental change to thetoothbrush.
This was a fundamental leap.
Over time the story cametogether in the form of a name.

(12:12):
The Sonic Hair Toothbrush.
Something that told the story ina single word.
This was a health device aboutcaring for yourself that used
sonic cleaning technology tomake your mouth the cleanest it
had ever been.
It was about gum health, notwhiter teeth like every other

(12:33):
brush and toothpaste on themarket.
It wasn't about 20,000 Hertz,but about bacterial destruction.
This is where Giulianitransformed the invention.
Rather than equations, he spokein metaphors.
But these choices took years tostumble upon.

(12:55):
And after that, he still had tofind his early advocates,
turning skeptical dentists intofull believers.
After all, they would go intodentist's office and show them
the academic studies about howclean it made teeth and about
the number of bacteria.
But there's something aboutexperience that a study just

(13:17):
can't match.
If you've ever tried a sonichair toothbrush, you'll
understand how clean it makesyour mouth feel.
For a dentist to go brush histeeth and realize his teeth have
never felt so clean.
And this is a person who knowsthe best brushing habits, who

(13:40):
knows to replace his toothbrushregularly, whose career probably
stems on having a nice, brightsmile and fresh, minty breath.
After trying it on themselves,they can't believe how clean
their teeth feel.
What a sigh of relief for thebusiness.
Giuliani began to get ordersfrom dentists' office and their

(14:05):
patients who are being told howgreat this toothbrush is.
And in that success is when thereal challenges began.
Demand outpaced manufacturingcapacity.
We need more space, moreproduction space.
Materials and vendors and supplychain resilience become factors

(14:25):
in the business.
Then with the realization thatthey are onto something begins.
The fight for shelf space.
Procter and Gamble and Colgatecontrol this at almost every
national chain in the country.
How do you stop those deeppockets from shutting you out?

(14:49):
As he sat there in his office inhis light blue Oxford shirt that
looked a little like graphpaper, he thought, maybe you
don't shut out those pockets.
Maybe we keep doing what we'redoing, we keep improving the
product, we keep telling thedentists, we keep letting people

(15:10):
tell their friends about howclean it makes their mouths
feel.
Maybe then the shelf will fightfor us.
And that's why the Sonic AirToothbrush sits there today
selling tens of millions ofunits annually around the world.
Hello to everybody listening tothis podcast.

(15:30):
I'm your host, Brandon Downley,and I would like to take a
second to just say I'm gratefulthat you're listening to the
Engineering Passion Express.
It's growing and becoming moresuccessful, and I would like to
make it even better than it istoday.
I have a number of ideas for newepisodes that I'm working on
creating.
However, these episodes do costmoney to create, to host, to

(15:53):
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(16:14):
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As I said, I'm truly grateful toyou all that are listening to
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episodes.
And I hope you do too.
I'll see you on future episodesof the Engineering Passion

(16:35):
Express.