Horse hair has been on toothbrushes for at least 800 years. Nylon has been there for less than 90. Here's how that happened.
TL;DR: The story in five dates
It's easy to assume the plastic toothbrush is the normal one, and a horse hair brush is the alternative. The history runs the other way. Horse hair was on toothbrushes centuries before plastic existed. Nylon is the newcomer.
Here's how it happened.
Before nylon: eight centuries of horse hair
One of the earliest written records of a bristle toothbrush mentions horse hair. In 1223, the Japanese Zen master Dōgen travelled to China and wrote that he saw monks cleaning their teeth with brushes made of horse-tail hair attached to an ox-bone handle.
When the toothbrush reached Europe in the 1600s, it arrived with Chinese hog bristle. Europeans found hog bristle too firm and preferred the softer feel of horse hair. Napoleon is said to have used a horsehair toothbrush.
The first mass-produced toothbrush has a good story behind it. In 1780, an Englishman named William Addis was in prison. He saved a small bone from a meal, drilled holes in it, got some boar bristles from a guard, and tied them through the holes in tufts. When he was released, he turned it into a business. The company he started is still making brushes today.
Addis used boar bristle, but horse hair stayed on the shelves too. London's Science Museum holds a pair of horsehair toothbrushes made by Savory & Moore of London between 1870 and 1920. For more than a century after Addis, toothbrushes were made the same basic way: a bone, wooden or early-plastic handle, with animal hair bristles.
The chemist who made the first nylon
Wallace Carothers was a chemist who left a teaching job at Harvard to lead a research team at DuPont. On 28 February 1935, his team produced the first sample of nylon, the world's first fully synthetic fibre.
Nylon is a polyamide, a plastic made from petrochemicals. It could be drawn into fine, strong, even threads, which made it useful for almost anything that had been made from natural fibre. Carothers died in 1937 and never saw it go on sale.
1938: the first nylon toothbrush
Nylon's first commercial product wasn't stockings. It was a toothbrush. On 24 February 1938, the Weco Products Company of Chicago began selling Dr. West's Miracle-Tuft, the first toothbrush with DuPont nylon bristles.
The timing helped. Much of the world's boar bristle came from China, and the war between China and Japan disrupted supply. Nylon offered toothbrush makers something they could produce at home, in any quantity. The Miracle-Tuft was advertised on promises like “no bristle shedding” and “100 per cent waterproofed”.
Here's why manufacturers switched:
Reliable supply
Nylon could be made in a factory instead of imported, at a time when the bristle trade was being disrupted by war.
Every bristle the same
Synthetic filament comes out uniform, in whatever thickness and stiffness the maker sets.
Built for mass production
Once production was running, nylon could be made cheaply in huge volumes, which suited the machine-made brush that came to dominate the market.
Stockings, parachutes and the war
Nylon became famous two years later. Nylon stockings went on sale across America on 15 May 1940 and sold out in huge numbers within days.
Then the war took it. In 1942, the US War Production Board took over DuPont's nylon output for the war effort. Nylon replaced silk in parachutes, and it went into ropes, tents and tyres. Some people called it the fibre that won the war.
Softer nylon, and nylon becomes the default
The first nylon bristles were very stiff, and dentists of the time were wary of them. Softer nylon bristles arrived around 1950, and from there nylon steadily took over.
Over the following decades, animal hair bristles all but disappeared from supermarket shelves. Today, almost every toothbrush you can buy has nylon bristles. That includes most bamboo toothbrushes, which swapped the handle but kept the plastic bristles.
Why this matters now
The point isn't that people in 1938 got it wrong. Nylon solved real problems: supply, cost and consistency. It's still the default for good reasons, and we cover where it wins in Horse Hair vs Nylon Toothbrush Bristles.
The point is that the plastic toothbrush is newer than most people think. Horse hair has been on toothbrushes since at least 1223. Nylon has been there since 1938.
Our horse hair toothbrush goes back to the original idea, with modern processing: the bristles are steam-sterilised and UV treated, and pressure-anchored into a bamboo head without glue. When we looked in 2026, we couldn't find another New Zealand retailer selling an animal-bristle toothbrush.
The toothbrush, in short
What the history tells you:
Frequently asked questions
Who invented nylon?
Wallace Carothers and his team at DuPont produced the first nylon on 28 February 1935.
When was the first nylon toothbrush made?
Dr. West's Miracle-Tuft, made by the Weco Products Company of Chicago with DuPont nylon, went on sale on 24 February 1938. It was nylon's first commercial product.
What were toothbrush bristles made of before nylon?
Animal hair, mainly horse hair and hog or boar bristle. A record from 1223 describes Chinese monks using horse-tail hair brushes, Europeans in the 1600s preferred horse hair for its softer feel, and William Addis's mass-produced brushes from 1780 used boar bristle.
How long have horse hair toothbrushes been around?
At least 800 years. The Japanese monk Dōgen recorded horse-tail hair toothbrushes in China in 1223, and London makers were still selling horsehair toothbrushes in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Is nylon plastic?
Yes. Nylon is a synthetic polyamide made from petrochemicals, which is a type of plastic.
Keep reading
- Horse hair vs boar bristle toothbrush: which is better?
- Horse hair toothbrush vs nylon bristles: an honest comparison
- Are bamboo toothbrushes plastic free? Castor oil vs horse hair bristles
- Do toothbrushes shed microplastics? What a 2025 study found
Who this guide is for
Anyone curious about why toothbrushes are made the way they are, and New Zealanders looking at alternatives to plastic bristles.
If you'd like to try horse hair for yourself, our horse hair bristle and bamboo toothbrushes come in a family 4-pack.
Explore the Horse Hair Toothbrush →Sources
Science Museum Group: Toothbrush with horsehair bristles, London, England, 1870-1920
Wikipedia: Toothbrush (history, including Dōgen's 1223 record)
Hagley Museum and Library: On this date in 1938
Science Museum: Nylon, the creation of a revolutionary fabric
