Annex 3
After the reflections, the inventions
This leads me to answer a question that is always asked of me: what are the things that have marked you the most in your life as an inventor?
Outside the narrow field of interviews, and the purely artificial spontaneity, but murder that they impose, I made a look back on these 50 years and found two worlds there:
1 – Invention, that is to say, the idea representing a dangerous technological break for a well-established train-train obliging to prove the validity of your thought and to find the human and financial resources in a world that rejects them with all its might.
2 – The “world premieres”, when you build something that didn’t exist and you have to design everything in a world that is generally very morally hostile. They are often linked to inventions (obviously!).
What I am presenting now, without false modesty, are the moments that have marked my personal and professional life the most. As I read them, I would ask you to never forget that for each of these stages or world premieres, the criticisms at the time were strong and often nasty. For example, I lost my position as at the Lyon University in 1980 (unfortunately I was not the only researcher in the 20th century to know about this terrible wound).
A - The most important “steps” in my life as an inventor.
Often associated with patents, sometimes with conferences or publications, I tell you in all simplicity the 18 stages that were for me the most important in my professional life. (see articles, conferences et patents) :
1- My thesis DDS (1973) “Optical Impression” and my congress in Tours (1976)
2- Presentation of the first dental CadCam IOS prototype at the Garancière Congress in Paris, September 1983 (see video)
3- The production of my three technical specifications for the establishment of the rules for the development of digital dentistry for the French Ministry of Research and Industry and the ANVAR (see in the selection of publications page 1/ 1984 and 1987)
4- Filing of patents from 1982 to 1984 founders of the dental CadCam
5- Two articles in “Les cahiers de Prothèse” n°50 in June 1985
6- The realization of the first crown by CadCam in mouth in congress in the presence of more than 800 confreres at the French ADF congress in Paris November 1985 (see video) with an IOS in structured light.
7- The realization of the first heterogeneous composite architected in 3D Aristée (1985) (voir vidéo)
8- The first XR-RVG tests (Strasbourg 1983 and IRIES 1984)
9- The production of the first digital articulator (1984) connected to the CadCam (1991) (see video 1984-1988)
10- The first French spectrocolorimeter with Bertin (1987) (see video)
11- The sale of the world’s first REAL CadCam system by Hennson (1986-87) (Strasbourg 1990 video)
12- The making of the first crown in 1988 in the USA, at a congress Chicago Midwinter «on live» in front of 5000 dentists with occlusion and tinting using a spectrocolorimeter developed in collaboration with the company Bertin. (see video)
13- The completion of the first bridge in 1989 in Berlin (see video).
14- The realization of the first fiber posts “composipost” with RTD in 1989 (see video)
15- The first fast plasma and LED polymerization in 1997-1999.
16- Implementation of the first active whitening and whitening methods in 2002.
17- The first IOS scanner without structured light in 2009.
18- Invis’art’s first IOT dental optical tray in 2021
B - The “first” important in my life as an inventor and teacher
These inventions have led me to have to build a number of infrastructures to help establish them. As they are almost all linked to my most disruptive invention, Artificial Intelligence and its CadCam, they are essentially world firsts:
This began with the establishment of the first French research laboratory in digital dentistry (1985-GBM Lyon), which led to the first world congress on digital dentistry (Chambéry 1985). Following the public realization of the first prosthesis by CadCam (1983-1985), I developed the first dental CadCam teaching in the world for dentists in French universities (Marseille then Nice from 1986 to 1989) and for prosthetists (Aix-Lyon CITA) then in American universities (USC, Los Angeles 1989 to 1999). I also continued to provide all or part of this teaching in France, at the UFR of Montpellier from 1999 to 2019.
You will also understand that the invention of the CadCam was not an accident, but a long history of work, inventions, passion and risks. This probably explains why my colleagues often think of me as the “father of modern dentistry” and I cannot thank them enough for the honour they give me. « MERCI » because it gives me the courage to continue.
Finally it was in Europe as in the USA or Japan more than 52 years of work faithful to my first idea of 1970: to put my dear dentistry of the eighteenth century of Pierre Fauchard in the world of the future, the one that is open to digital by relying on real scientific bases that respect the principles of the thermodynamics of systems.
I want to thank you for your patience…