Banding chair time were usually blocked in two hour sessions back in the day
 

I wore a full banded appliance from 1968 to 1973 (currently the writer at Orthodontic Headgear Hell).  It was a different world.   These days it is easy to get people with braces to smile and it is not unusual to see an adult with braces.  These days it is even difficult to see the actual braces with Invisalign  and clear brackets.  In 1968 it was all bands.

My orthodontist graduated in the first class of the first orthodontic program in the United States in 1927.  By 1968 he was using preformed bands but for most of his career he hand formed each band.  There were no rubber ligatures to hold in the archwires, only thin stainless steel wires that had to be individually hand tied, cut and tucked away so the sharp end of the wire did not cut your gums.

If your teeth were crowded they had to put spacers on to make space for the bands.  Dr Curran put my 'appliances' (he only called the appliances) on in four stages, the first time he banded the front six teeth, top and bottom.  They were not as crowded on top but very crowded on the bottom.  Two weeks later he did the same to the back teeth, top and bottom.  A couple of days before banding he would put the spacers on, that only took a minute.  My banding appointments took two to three hours each.

The third stage was the archwires.  It is the archwires that do the work and Curran still hand formed each one.  Changing an archwire meant a long appointment.  They were not heat activated, they only worked when the ortho bent them. It took at least an hour to put the archwires on, if not longer.  Each bracket had to be hand wired, cut and tucked.  This was spread out with 5 appointments over six weeks.

And finally at the next appointment I got my headgear and elastics.  Then I was done.  I know other people who had all the bands put on in one day.  I knew one girl where she had bands put on months apart.  Each case was different.  It was a painful process at each step but I think some people were over dramatic about the physical pain.

It was the social pain I hated.  Headgear 16 hours a day.  Braces that filled my mouth for five years.  I had to smile through it but never forgot all of that metal.  Each new person you met had to get used to seeing the braces, you could see them staring a thankful it was not them.

Now all of my old braces would just be museum pieces. 

Ich war irgendwann zwischen 1987 und 1990 für einige Tage in Hamburg. Dort in der S-Bahn sass ich zwei Mädels gegenüber von denen eine Brackets hatte und die andere erzählte, dass sie am Vortag ihre Bänder bekommen hätte. Dies waren zumindest auf den Frontzähnen bestimmt Bänder. 1992 war ich in London, dort begegnete ich einer Südamerikanerin, welche sowohl im Ober- als Unterkiefer vollständig bebändert war.
Das erste Mal zahnfarbene Brackets sah ich bei bei zwei Mitschülerinnen 1985, eine der beiden musste die Brackets jedoch nach einiger Zeit ersetzen, weil sich diese stark verfärbt haben.

Somit gab es sicher Bänder, Metallbrackets und zahnfarbene Brackets gleichzeitig.

Muss ja schon Paarell gewesen sein denn der 1 Doc macht noch das alte System der nächste das neue, der Bildungsstand ist ja auch heute nicht immer der gleiche { Doc grundsatzlich in allen Fachrichtungen }

In the US brackets started in the mid seventies and full bands were very rare only ten years later.  As the adhesives improved there was no reason to use bands and a lot of reasons not to.  By the mid eighties full bands were history.  This picture, and I am sure I will regret posting it, shows how bad it was:

https://dereferer.me/?https://dereferer.me/?http://s1100.photobucket.com/user/lespearsen/media/Portraits/s8%20sept%20id_zpsspwqrr8g.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0

That was me as a freshman in college in 1972.  I had been wearing the braces over four years at this point (we moved across country after two two year and was ted a lot of time getting a new ortho).  Do not let the smile fool you, I hated showing all of that metal off.  With my headgear on I was scared to see myself in the mirror.

I had braces (all bands) in the early 80s.  Before I got braces, I had an expander for a few months.  On the day the expander was removed, I got bands on my upper and lower molars and on my lower incisors.  I also got headgear that day.  That appointment took a couple hours.  A few months later, my upper incisors were banded.  A couple months after that, my canines and premolars were banded.  Those appointments took about an hour.  The bands were pre-formed with brackets already attached, but for each tooth, the orthodontist had to find the right-sized band through trial and error.  That took a long time.  Placing the bands on my teeth was fast in comparison.  Then the orthodontist had to install the archwires, which took a while, because the wire was stiff, and had to be hand-bent to fit the irregular alignment of the teeth.  The archwires were held in place with individual wire ties on each tooth.  Toward the end of my treatment, I got archwires with a couple of complex loops in them.  Instead of individual ties, the archwires were held in place by a long strand of ligature wire, wrapped and twisted around the brackets on the bands.

I don't know what it was like in the rest of the US, but in my town, in the early 80s, everyone who got braces got bands on all their teeth.  The first time I saw anyone with bonded brackets was about a year after I got braces.  By the late 80s, brackets had become more common than bands, but it was still not unusual to see someone with all bands as late as the early 90s.  After that though, bands became much less common.  I'd still see people with all bands, but maybe only once or twice a year.  The last time I saw anyone with all bands was about 10 or 12 years ago.  It wasn't anyone I knew, just some young woman I saw walking through a store, so I don't know the circumstances of her case, whether her treatment required bands, or if she was just one of the last patients of an older orthodontist.

Jay, that is a really interesting account of your full bands. Thanks for sharing. Did you get spacers between each tooth before the bands were installed?

No, I didn't have spacers between each tooth.  I just had them between the molars.

Must have taken some effort to get the bands on the lower front incisors in particular?

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