In 1871, James B. Morrison patented the first commercially manufactured foot-treadle dental engine.Credited with making orthodontics into a dental specialty, Angle also established the first school of orthodontics (Angle School of Orthodontia in St. Louis, 1900), the first orthodontic society (American Society of Orthodontia, 1901), and the first Dental specialty journal (American Orthodontist, 1907Morrison's inexpensive, mechanized tool supplies dental burs with enough speed to cut enamel and dentin smoothly and quickly, revolutionizing the practice of dentistry.In 1896 prominent New Orleans dentist C. Edmond Kells took the first dental x-ray of a living person in the U.S.
In 1899, Edward Hartley Angle classified the various forms of malocclusion.In 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen, a German physicist, discovered the x-ray.