Dental floss has been around longer than you think. Grooves made by dental floss and toothpicks have been found in the skulls of prehistoric humans and Native Americans.

The first modern floss was smooth as silk - because it really was silk! Levi Spear Parmly, a New Orleans dentist in the early 1800s, recommended that his patients pass a piece of silk thread between their teeth for better cleaning. Johnson & Johnson, headquartered in New Brunswick, New Jersey, received the first patent for dental floss in 1898. It was made from the same silk as surgical sutures. Nylon dental floss was invented during World War II by Dr. Charles C. Bass. Wax-coated floss also was introduced around this time.

Dental floss has many uses beyond cleaning between teeth.

• Chefs often use it to cleanly cut soft foods such as rolled dough, cheesecake and soft cheese.

• It's great for emergency repairs and as a sewing aid. Backpackers have used it to fix their tents, jackets and backpacks. Dr. Scott Swank, assistant curator of the Dr. Samuel D. Harris National Museum of Dentistry uses it to sew buttons on work coats and to attach umbrella sections back onto the spines.

• Several years ago in Austin, Texas, a prisoner used floss - coated with an abrasive toothpaste - to saw through the bars of his jail cell and attack another prisoner. In 1994, an inmate in West Virginia braided floss into a rope to scale a wall and escape.

Dental floss even makes beautiful music. Frank Zappa's Montana is all about the virtues of moving to Montana "just to raise me up a crop of dental floss."