Braces have been around, in some form, for over 4,000 years. The earliest known attempt at straightening or stabilizing teeth dates back to ancient Egypt, where gold wire was used to bind teeth together. What we recognize as modern orthodontics, though, took shape in 18th-century France and has evolved dramatically in just the last few decades.
Ancient Attempts at Straightening Teeth
The oldest evidence of anything resembling braces comes from an Egyptian mummy excavated near the Great Pyramid at Giza. A gold wire was found uniting two molar teeth, functioning as a ligature to hold them in position. It’s a remarkably simple device, but it shows that the desire to fix dental alignment is nearly as old as civilization itself.
The Etruscans, who lived in what is now central Italy between roughly 800 and 200 BCE, took things further. They crafted dental appliances from flat gold bands that wrapped around individual teeth. Some of these bands stabilized teeth loosened by gum disease, while others held replacement teeth carved from ivory or bone. Each band was custom-fitted by pressing soft, relatively pure gold around the living teeth, and individual loops were joined by cold welding. Interestingly, many of these appliances were found on high-status women who appear to have had healthy front teeth deliberately removed so they could wear a gold-banded replacement, likely as a status symbol rather than a medical necessity.
The First True Orthodontic Device
Modern orthodontics traces back to 1728, when French surgeon Pierre Fauchard described the “bandeau” in his landmark dental textbook. This was an expandable arch made of silver or gold that was fastened to the teeth using waxed silk ligatures. The bandeau applied gentle, sustained pressure to straighten and stabilize crooked teeth. It was crude by today’s standards, but the core principle was the same one orthodontists still rely on: slow, consistent force moves teeth through bone over time.
Fauchard is often called the father of modern dentistry, and the bandeau represents the moment when tooth alignment shifted from folk remedy to something resembling clinical treatment.
Edward Angle and the Birth of Orthodontics
For most of the 1800s, straightening teeth remained a loosely defined corner of general dentistry. That changed with Edward Angle (1855–1930), widely considered the father of modern orthodontics. Angle created the term “malocclusion” and developed a classification system (Class I through III) that gave dentists, for the first time, a standardized way to describe and categorize misaligned bites. His system was revolutionary because it didn’t just label problems; it also defined what a normal bite should look like.
In 1900, Angle founded the Angle School of Orthodontia in St. Louis, the first school of orthodontics in the world. This is the moment orthodontics became a distinct dental specialty rather than a side interest. His teaching through the 1880s and 1890s at various US universities laid the groundwork, and his school formalized it into a recognized profession with standardized training.
From Gold Bands to Bonded Brackets
For decades, braces meant wrapping metal bands around every single tooth. These bands were made from gold or silver and were bulky, uncomfortable, and expensive. In the 1960s, stainless steel began replacing precious metals, though it didn’t become the industry standard until the mid-1970s. That shift made braces dramatically more affordable and accessible to ordinary families.
The other major change came in the mid-1960s, when two researchers working independently on opposite sides of the world changed how brackets attach to teeth. Dr. George Newman in New Jersey and Professor Fujio Miura at Tokyo Medical and Dental University both pioneered a technique for bonding orthodontic brackets directly to tooth enamel using adhesives. Before this, every tooth needed a full metal band wrapped around it. Direct bonding eliminated that requirement, making braces smaller, less visible, and more comfortable. This is essentially the system still used today.
Space-Age Wires
The wires threading through modern braces owe a debt to NASA. Nitinol, a nickel-titanium alloy originally developed for aerospace applications, was adapted for orthodontic use in the late 1970s. What makes nitinol special is its “shape memory.” The wire can be bent or deformed, but it gradually returns to its original shape as it warms to body temperature inside your mouth. This superelastic property means the wire delivers a constant, gentle force over weeks, moving teeth more efficiently and with less discomfort than the rigid stainless steel wires of earlier generations.
Lingual Braces: Hidden Behind the Teeth
By the 1970s, adults were increasingly interested in orthodontic treatment but wanted something less visible. Dr. Craven Kurz began experimenting with placing brackets on the tongue-facing side of teeth in 1970, initially using clear plastic. By 1976, he had submitted the first patent for a lingual braces system to the US Patent Office. Lingual braces work on the same mechanical principles as traditional braces but are essentially invisible from the outside. They remain a niche option today because they’re harder to adjust and can initially interfere with speech, but they were the first serious attempt at cosmetically discreet orthodontics.
Clear Aligners Change the Game
The biggest shift in orthodontics since direct bonding came in the late 1990s. Align Technology was founded in 1997, and the FDA cleared its Invisalign system for use in 1998. Instead of brackets and wires, Invisalign uses a series of custom-molded clear plastic trays that are swapped out every one to two weeks, each one nudging teeth slightly closer to their target position. The trays are removable for eating and brushing, which solved two of the biggest daily frustrations of traditional braces.
Clear aligners started out limited to mild cases, but expanded labeling and improved technology have since made them viable for a much wider range of alignment issues. They’ve also spawned an entire category of competitors, making clear aligner treatment one of the fastest-growing segments of dental care.
4,000 Years of the Same Idea
What’s striking about the entire history of braces is how consistent the underlying principle has been. From Egyptian gold wire to Etruscan bands to nitinol archwires, every generation has relied on the same basic approach: apply gentle, sustained pressure to teeth, and they will gradually move through bone. The materials have gone from gold to stainless steel to shape-memory alloys to clear plastic, the attachment methods have gone from wrapping to bonding, and the visibility has gone from impossible to ignore to nearly invisible. But the teeth still move the same way they did 4,000 years ago.