EDITORIAL

The Association’s seventieth

A lert JOURNAL readers will be somewhat startled this month to note that the April Boston meeting is referred to as the seventieth annual session of the American Association of Orthodontists instead of the sixty-sixth, as in previous issues. The change is due to a suggestion by the editor to the president that the annual meetings of the Association should reflect the exact date of the founding of the organization in 1900. President Prezza.no presented the sug- gestion to the Board of Trustees at its interim meeting in New York on Oct. 11, 1969, and it was accepted by unanimous consent.

The mix-up was due to four cancelled meetings during two major national and international upheavals-the Great Depression of the early 1930’s and World War II during the early 1940’s. The first cancellation occurred at the bottom of the depression in 1934. Three more occurred during the war and post- war years, with cancellations in 1943, 1945, and 1947. With a certain amount of logic, it seemed apparent to officers that cancelled meetings deserved no numbers, but the decision upset the recognition of landmark anniversaries that most organizations like to celebrate,

Confusion reigned during the early 1950’s. The Association was 50 years old in 1950, but the programs showed only forty-six annual meeetings. In 1954, the program recorded the fiftieth annual meeting, but the Association was actually 54 years old. Both meetings were in Chicago, and no one could decide when to celebrate the Association’s Golden Anniversary. As a result there was no celebration. Things will now be different when the time comes to celebrate the Association’s Diamond Jubilee in 1975 and its Centennial in the year 2000.

In making this change, the Association is in good company, for the American Dental Association had the same problem and resolved it in the same way. The ADA managed to meet each year during the depression, but there was no national dental meeting in 1945, and only the House of Delegates met in 1942, 1943, 1944, and 1946. This also was true in 1915, the second year of World War I, when the only ADA meeting was that of the House. The American Associa- tion of Orthodontists, however, did manage to hold its meetings in 1915 and throughout World War I. The year 1915 was also the date of the founding of the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ORTHODONTICS as a monthly periodical, and it was the first year that the Journal of the American Dental Association was pub- lished on a monthly basis.

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618 Editorial Am. J. Orthodontics December 1969

When the American Dental Association announced that its 1969 Kew York meeting would he its 110th annual session, it recorded the exact number of years that t,hat Association had been in esistcncc since its founding in 1859. It was also able to celebrate its ccntcnnial properly in 1959 bccausc it, had ignores, I missed meetings in its calCl~li~ti0lls. The American Associatioil of Orthodont,ists was organized in June, 1900, and it startctl Counting its ycars from the time: ok its first annual meeting in 1901 when it. 1va.s 1 \-t%r old. St,rangeJy. the Xmericau Dental Association had no meeting during its first year of existence iii 1861, but it cannot be laid to the War Between the States since that tragedy was not to start for another year.

It is interesting that there was no scientific meeting of either association in 1904. This was due to an International Dental Congress that was held in St. Louis. Both organizations recorded the meeting as an annual meeting since both contributed to the program. In 1905 the American Association of Orthodontists promptly resumed numbering its meetings according to its birth date by calling it,s 1905 meeting its fifth annual session, despite the fact that it had had no formal meeting in 19O4. Unfortunately, the precedent was ignored in latczr years.

The American Board of Orthodontics also had the same meeting identifica- tion problem, but to a lesser degree, and it was solTed by a simple resolution at the Board’s 1963 meeting. Today, when the current ABO booklet for the 1970 meeting reads “forty-first year,!’ it correctly establishes the Board’s founding date as 1929. When the year 2000 rolls around, the American Association 01 Orthodontists can celebrate its centennial without having to reconcile a pro- gram date with its true founding date in Jane of 1900.

R. F. I).

With an understanding of the early ambitions of this Society, let us glance back a couple of years and see if any really radical changes are noticeable. At the time of the formal organization of the American Society of Orthodontists there were, so far as I am able to learn, but five men devoting their time exclusively to this work. Two of these had been so engaged for a number of years, while the others were comparatively new in the field; indeed, one entered it after the informal meeting at which time it was decided to organize. To-day we find specialists to the number of at least twelve who are devot- ing their best energies to orthodontia, and at least as many more are putting forth every effort to qualify themselves for special practice in the near future. It is as yet too early to say whether all of these have chosen wisely, but certain it is that many of them have attained success which bears eloquent testimony to this effect. (Watson, Milton T.: President’s address, Dec. 3, 1903, Buffalo, N. Y., Transactions of the third annual meet- ing of the American Society of Orthodontists.)