The most important part of dental imaging equipment, from cameras to CT scans, is how the images produced are used by dentists to plan procedures, operations and aesthetically pleasing restorations using systems such as CEREC.
Because of this, it is rather rare for a specific piece of dental equipment to have a history so unique that it remained an object of interest for over 20 years, but one particular intraoral camera has continued to fascinate due to its rather familiar shape.
The Imagin Systems HotRod intraoral camera was made in 2000 but what made it unusual was that the outer casing was almost a decade older than this and had been used for, of all products, a video game console.
The Atari Jaguar was produced by Flare Technology for the Atari Corporation in 1993, but despite an aggressive marketing campaign, the console sold poorly and the company merged with JT Storage, a producer of hard drives, who attempted to liquidate the struggling former computer giant.
The remaining stock of 100,000 completed consoles was sold to Telegames, a budget supplier who specialised in orphaned software and hardware, who proceeded to sell the remaining stock of games and cartridges at the UK retailer Game.
The name itself was sold to Hasbro Interactive, who then sold it to the French company Infogrames, but the most interesting sale was of the plastic moulds.
According to an interview with Imagin’s CEO Steve Mortenson, he had visited Stosser Industries, a manufacturing company, with a proposed design for the case to fit his dental camera. They noted that the design looked very similar to the Atari Jaguar, and after some negotiation with JTS, the moulds were sold in May 1997 for less than £2000.
This was significantly cheaper than producing a mould from scratch and only needed slight modifications. Even the cartridge port was used for a memory expansion card.
Ultimately, the moulds were sold in 2014, but it highlights that even behind the most reliable and functional dental machinery there is often a history that solidifies its reliability.