The earliest known braces were nothing like the metal brackets you picture today. They were simple loops of gold wire tied around teeth, found on Egyptian mummies dating back thousands of years. From there, the journey to modern orthodontics passed through some surprisingly creative (and uncomfortable) stages.
Gold Wire in Ancient Egypt
The oldest physical evidence of an attempt to straighten or stabilize teeth comes from an Egyptian excavation at the site of Cheops. Archaeologists found two molar teeth joined together by a thin gold wire, essentially a ligature designed to hold a loose or drifting tooth in place. There was no bracket, no arch, no adhesive. Just a strand of gold wrapped around two neighboring teeth to bind them together.
This wasn’t orthodontics in the way we’d recognize it. The goal was likely to keep teeth from falling out rather than to move them into alignment. But the basic principle, using tension from a material looped around the teeth, became the foundation everything else was built on.
Roman Finger Pressure
The Roman writer Aulus Cornelius Celsus took an even simpler approach in the first century AD. He described using routine finger pressure to nudge teeth into better positions over time. No device at all, just hands. It sounds crude, but it reflects an understanding that teeth can be moved gradually with sustained, gentle force. That insight is still the core principle behind every orthodontic appliance used today.
The Bandeau: The First Real Appliance
The device that most resembles what we’d call “braces” didn’t appear until 1728, when French dentist Pierre Fauchard published his landmark dental textbook. He introduced the bandeau, a horseshoe-shaped strip of silver or gold that was custom-fitted to the arch of the teeth. The metal strip was fastened to individual teeth using waxed silk thread, which acted as tiny ligatures to pull teeth toward the arch and hold them there.
If you’re trying to picture it, imagine a curved metal band sitting along the inside or outside of your teeth, lashed to each one with silk string. It was bulky, visible, and required frequent adjustment. But it worked on the same mechanical principle as a modern archwire: a rigid shape that forces misaligned teeth to conform to it over time. Fauchard is widely considered the father of modern dentistry, and the bandeau is the reason orthodontics exists as a discipline.
Edward Angle and the Birth of Bracket Systems
The leap from Fauchard’s bandeau to something resembling today’s braces happened in the late 1800s and early 1900s, largely through the work of American dentist Edward Angle. Angle developed a series of increasingly refined appliances that moved orthodontics from art to engineering.
His first major design was the E-arch, a heavy wire that clamped to the molars and ran along the outside of the teeth. Individual teeth were then tied to this wire to be pulled into line. He followed that with the pin and tube appliance, which used small metal tubes soldered to bands on each tooth, with pins inserted to control the angle of movement. Then came the ribbon arch, which used a thin, flat wire slotted into brackets on each tooth. Finally, Angle developed the edgewise arch mechanism, which allowed orthodontists to control tooth movement in three dimensions for the first time. This last design is the direct ancestor of the bracket-and-wire system still used in orthodontic offices.
Metal Bands Wrapped Around Every Tooth
Even with Angle’s bracket designs, there was a major practical problem: there was no way to glue a bracket directly to a tooth. Before modern dental adhesives existed, orthodontists had to wrap a metal band around each individual tooth and then attach the bracket to that band.
These bands were made from stainless steel tape that came in different widths and thicknesses depending on the tooth. The orthodontist would cut the tape, bend it into a ring using special pliers, and then weld or solder it closed right there in the chair. To make room for the bands, brass or rubber separators were wedged between the teeth about a week beforehand, pushing them slightly apart so the metal could slip over each one. Every tooth in the treatment plan got its own custom-fitted steel ring. The result looked like a full set of metal-capped teeth connected by wires.
This is what braces looked like for most of the 20th century: bulky, highly visible bands of steel encircling every tooth, with brackets welded on top and archwires threaded through them. It was effective but heavy, uncomfortable, and difficult to keep clean.
From Gold to Stainless Steel
For most of orthodontic history, the materials of choice were gold and silver. They were soft enough to work with, resistant to corrosion in the mouth, and biocompatible. But they were also expensive. Stainless steel entered dentistry in 1919, and by 1937 it had proven itself as a viable replacement. It was cheaper, stronger, and easier to manufacture into consistent shapes. Stainless steel became the standard material for archwires, bands, and brackets, and it remains the most common material in conventional braces today.
The shift from wrapping every tooth in a steel band to bonding small brackets directly onto the tooth surface didn’t happen until the second half of the 20th century, when dental adhesives became reliable enough to hold a bracket in place for months or years. That single change is what made braces look the way they do now: small squares on the front of each tooth instead of full metal rings.