Evolution of Impression Tray and Materials- A Literature Review

Dentistry, as a specialty is thought to have begun around 3000 B.C. The study of dental history consistently reveals each age's indebtedness to its immediate and distant predecessors. Nowhere has this been more strikingly revealed than in the field of prosthetic dentistry, dependent as it has been upon material and mechanical development and invention. Dentistry like the allied arts and sciences took full advantage of mechanical developments of the last twenty centuries. During this period applied mechanics was recognized as an essential supplement to biological principles of dentistry. Dentistry got established as a science and industrial development had a definite impact on dentistry. This article thus explains in depth the development of impression trays and materials.