S.S. White Dental Manufacturing Company.

Samuel Stockton White (1822-1879) was a Philadelphia dentist who in the mid 1840s began manufacturing porcelain teeth using feldspar. White gradually abandoned his practice for the manufacture of teeth, dental instruments and supplies. His porcelain teeth won the highest award at the Crystal Palace Exposition in London in 1851 and again at the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876.

By the mid nineteenth century the S.S. White Company had become the largest manufacturer of dental instruments in the world. Branch offices for the sale of the firm's products were opened in New York (1846), Boston (1850), Brooklyn (1852), Chicago (1858), Atlanta (1891), Rochester (1897), New Orleans, Cincinnati, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Nashville, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Peoria, and Omaha. Branches were established abroad in Berlin (1897), St. Petersburg (1899), Toronto, London, Paris, Japan, and Australia.

In 1881 the firm was incorporated, changing its name from the S.S. White Co. to the S.S. White Dental Manufacturing Co. The extensive plant of Johnston Bros., on Staten Island, New York, was acquired; it produced a large portion of the products marketed by the firm. The manufacture of teeth was discontinued in 1937. This company was the first to produce the all-metal dental chair, a flexible shaft engine, certain filling products, and precision steel instruments. It published the pioneering periodical, THE DENTAL COSMOS, from 1859 to 1936. The company was merged into the Pennwalt Corporation in 1970.

From the description of Records, 1791-1970, (bulk 1870-1965). (Hagley Museum & Library). WorldCat record id: 122458722