It was sort of a double take for me when I read that the first internet-connected toothbrush was Unveiled Sunday

at a preview event for the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show, the device from French-based startup aims to reinvent oral care. The toothbrush includes a sensor which detects how much tartar is being removed in a brushing. It also records brushing activity so users can maintain a consistent cleaning each time. The device conveys the information wirelessly to a smartphone app. When you use a normal toothbrush you never really know what youve cleaned. It might be 30 per cent. The only person who really knows is the dentist. But the app can tell users if they have missed hard-to-clean areas or are not getting a thorough brushing. I was onto next before it all registered so I quickly did an Alt Left Arrow. Its funny how things are all connected: the day before reading about the internet toothbrush on the web I was lying horizontal in a dentists chair listing to the hygienist measuring my pocket depths with a periodontal probe. I heard mandibular 4 eight four mm. the hygienist was doing recording in binary notation. What with this internet toothbrush on my mind I asked her if she was coding straight into a computer program or talking into an electronic codec. She explained that she was using the FDI DENTAL NUMBERING SYSTEM and that it is a 2 digit used worldwide and that every branch of dentistry uses this system. Each quadrant is assigned a number. The maxillary right quadrant is assigned the number 1, the maxillary left quadrant is assigned the number 2, the mandibular left quadrant is assigned the number 3, and the mandibular right quadrant is assigned the number 4.The teeth within each quadrant are assigned a number from 1 through 8 with 1 being the central incisor and 8 being the third molar. That means that I was first introduced to binary notation way before my last year of high school or maybe the first year of technical college. They called it the new math and we only did it for few weeks before we moved on to five figure logarithms. The new mat had Venn diagrams which were intersecting circle shapes that we drew on paper and sometimes they intersected and that area housed number that were common to two different sets of numbers: it may have even been the union of two sets. Before we got serious about five figure logarithms we were all asked what was the base system that logarithms used. Out teacher the drew on the board a series of ones and zeroes and introduced numbers with a base system of 2 .. the binary system and the we did a number system with the base eight .the octal system . And then a number system with the base 16 ..and then we were introduced to a set of six new

number icons between 10 and 16 because 1 . 2 was an icon for a base ten system or a base eight. The hexi-decimal system together with binary the holy grail of computers and the internet toothbrush. But we didnt know that then because we were refocused back on to five figure logarithms to simplify huge multiplication and division calculations. We added and subtracted with unbridled happiness Characteristics and Mantissas. I never put it all together before now I was a computer geek at school before schools had computers . and my first hygienist was the Steve Jobs of dentistry. Maybe John Colville who was known as the brainiest one in 5th form got it all and put it all together before we did and maybe he is now heading up a research skunk works that is developing wearable computer and tablets or computational photography for wearable cameras .virtual reality headsets or some other device that will lead the wearable revolution.