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Who
invented chewing gum?
The
ancient Greeks were known to be fond of a gummy substance named
mastiche,
derived from the resin of the mastic tree. In fact, Dioscorides,
a Greek physician and
medical botanist of the First Century, refers to the "curative
powers" of the mastic in
his writing. Today many Greeks and Middle Easterners enjoy chewing
mastic resin,
combined with beeswax, a softening agent. It may quite literally
be said that mastiche
is the "chew" of the Greeks, since the root "mastichan,"
in Greek means "to chew."
The
Mayans were not too far behind the Greeks in developing the custom
of chewing
gum. Research shows that in about the Second Century, this large
tribe of Central
American Indians practiced the art of chewing what was later to
be known as
"chicle," the coagulated sap of the Sapodilla tree. The
Sapodilla trees were cautiously
cultivated, not being tapped for chicle until they reached the age
of 70 when they
produced a yield of slightly more than a kilo in one day, followed
by a four to
eight-year rest. With a rope around the waist, the chicleros climbed
up the often
35-metre high tree, making gashes in the bark from the bottom to
the top so the
latex or "milk" could run down to a small bucket on the
ground. Then, in about the
year 800, the Mayan civilization met its end for reasons still largely
unknown, virtually
the only Mayan practice retained intact was that of chewing gum.
Its use continued
among the descendants of the Mayans at least as late as the Nineteenth
Century.
Meanwhile,
the American Indians of New England were also chewing gum made from
the resin of spruce trees. From the beginning in America, the custom
of chewing gum
grew, until during the early Nineteenth Century, the first gum products,
lumps of
spruce gum, were sold commercially. In
1848, John Curtis made the first gum in the
United States when he cooked resin from a spruce tree on his wood-burning
stove.
In 1869, the first patent issued for chewing gum was given to William
Semple, a
dentist in Ohio, who invented a gum to exercise the jaws and stimulate
the gums.
It never sold, probably because it was made primarily of rubber.
The
invention of gum, as we know it today, came about because of the
friendship of
two men, Thomas Adams, a photographer, and Antonio Lopez de Santa
Anna,
who had defeated the Texans at the Alamo. When Santa Anna was exiled
from
Mexico, he lived with Adams on Staten Island, New York. Adams had
tried different
schemes to make money but all had failed. Santa Anna told him of
an idea that
could make Adams wealthy. He told him of a gummy substance that
people in
Mexico had been chewing for thousands of years. It was called chicle,
the milky
sap from the sapodilla tree that grows in the tropical rain forests
of Central America.
But gum was not on either's mind. The plan was to blend chicle and
rubber
together to make cheaper tires, toys, and rainboots.
Santa
Anna had his friends in Mexico ship a ton of chicle to Adams. Although
he labored for about a year, every one of his experiments failed.
He had not been
able to blend chicle and rubber. A vast amount of useless chicle
was stored in his
warehouse and Adams decided to throw it all into the river. By sheer
luck, Adams
happened to go into a drugstore and saw a little girl buy some paraffin
wax chewing
gum. He remembered that Santa Anna had told him that Mexicans chewed
chicle.
Inspired, Adams started making unflavored pure chicle gum which
sold extremely well.
Some
years later, John Colgan, a drugstore owner in Louisville, Kentucky,
was
selling a gum he made from balsam tree sap and flavored with powdered
sugar.
He had heard of how successful Thomas Adams was, so he ordered 100
pounds of
chicle. He started making Taffy Tolu Chewing Gum, which was so successful
that
he sold his drugstore and devoted his time to manufacturing chewing
gum.
A
breakthrough in gum manufacture occurred when a popcorn salesman,
William
J. White, started experimenting with a barrel of chicle a friend
had given him. He
discovered how to flavor gum. Chicle does not absorb flavors, but
sugar does. He
combined flavors, such as peppermint, with corn syrup and then blended
the mixture
with the chicle. In 1899, the major gum manufacturers united to
become the
American Chicle Company. William White was president and Thomas
Adams, Jr.,
was chairman of the board. You might see some of their brands today,
such
as Black Jack and Beeman's. People have been chewing gum ever since.
William
Wrigley, Jr. (the founder of Wrigley Gum) devised a marketing technique
that caused sales of his gum to soar. He started out selling soap.
As an extra
incentive to merchants to carry Wrigley's soap, he offered them
free baking powder.
When baking powder proved to be more popular than soap, he switched
to the
baking powder business. One day, Mr. Wrigley got the idea to offer
merchants free
chewing gum with each can of baking powder.
Click
to read more about: Wrigley.
~From:
"What Makes Flamingos Pink?" by Bill McLain
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