Robert W. Hutson; Dentist Designed Oral-B Toothbrush...

Robert W. Hutson; Dentist Designed Oral-B Toothbrush Robert W. Hutson, 81, the dentist who invented the Oral-B toothbrush, died of pneumonia May 20 at his home in San Jose.

In the late 1940s, Hutson began experimenting with toothbrush designs in his spare time, trying to make one that was gentle on gums but strong enough to effectively clean teeth. He discovered that using tiny nylon filaments with rounded ends would achieve that result.

Hutson made his first Oral-B brushes in the workshop of his San Jose home. The name he gave each brush reflected the number of bristles it had.

His toothbrush initially had only modest success, but within a decade his firm was selling 5 million a year. By the mid-1990s, Oral-B toothbrush sales were estimated at $500 million a year. The brand is now owned by Gillette Co.

Hutson, an only child, grew up in the Watsonville, Calif., area and studied dentistry at UC San Francisco. He became a periodontist in the San Jose area.