Gum

People have been chewing gum-like wax, resin, and latex for thousands of years. American Indians introduced American colonists to the pleasures of chewing the fragrant resin from spruce trees. By the mid-nineteenth century, sweetened paraffin was commonly chewed. Modern commercial chewing gum got its start when the Mexican general Antonio de Santa Ana (who as president of Mexico had tried to put down the revolt in Texas) was exiled in the1860s. When he came to the United States, he brought chicle, a latex from the sapodilla tree that Mexicans liked to chew. Santa Ana approached a man named Thomas Adams with the chicle in hopes that there might be some commercial use for it. Adams tried to make toys and other products from the substance, but nothing worked. Finally, in 1869 he realized that it had an elasticity and resilience that made it satisfying to chew. At the time Americans chewed flavored paraffin-based gum, called White Mountain. Adams’s first gum, which had no added flavoring but was sweetened, was mass-produced beginning in 1871. It was wrapped in tissue and sold for a penny a stick. Adams introduced flavored gums beginning in 1884 and gumballs the following year; by 1888 they were sold in vending machines.