December 28, 1869 chewing gum is born
Well yes it was really a dentist, that that December 28, 1869 registered in his name, the “Chewing gum” or American rubber, that product that has crossed the centuries and the most varied adversities to reach us. Actually William Finley Semple, this was the name of the dentist, he had filed in his name the work that twenty years earlier another had invented. In fact, the first to put it on the market was John B. Curtis, who in 1848 created the “Pure Maine Spruce Gum”, where spruce is spruce. Curtis didn’t just make chewing gum, he went from town to town for sell it. The enterprise was successful and the Curtis & Son Chewing-gum company became a state-of-the-art factory for its time, with technological machinery built for the occasion e recipe for the manufacture of chewing gum long remained secret. But Curtis never patented his own invention, as did William Finley, who was a professional dentist in Ohio.
In the patent n ° 98.304 we read that it consisted in mixing the rubber invention with other substances we speak of chalk and charcoal, that made the product a “Pleasant chewing gum”“, But above all allowed him to perform the”purpose of a toothpaste»The functions of toothpaste. He simply recognized the practical function of chewing gum clean your teeth and, at the same time, help the patients with chewing problems. Due to the not very pleasant taste, despite the numerous experiments, the product was never put on sale. The first to industrially produce and sell Semple’s patented chewing gums was Thomas Adams, scientist and photographer, as well as secretary of the exiled Mexican leader Antonio López de Santa Anna. The latter, having retired to New Jersey, had brought with him large quantities of “chicle “; he had already had at first to vulcanize the resin to make it car tires, but since the result had not lived up to his expectations he had decided to fall back on chewing gum.
In 1871 Adams patented the first machine capable of producing large quantities: the first chewing-gum, the famous “Snapping and stretching” they had no flavor, and still managed to get a remarkable success. Galvanized with recognition, Adams began adding other ingredients, such as it sugar and licorice; thus, in the 1884, get to market the first American gum with taste and stick views: Black Jack. Later, in 1888, following the purchase of a method, patented by the chemist John Colgan to keep the taste of “cyclette”. And to think that chewing gum was already known to Maya, who used to chew the rubber extracted from a plant, the Manilkara chicle, or more simply “chicle”. this natural rubber, very sweet and dal delicate flavor, was obtained by making incisions on the trunk of the plant and collecting the substance that flowed from it into containers in which it was boiled until the right consistency is reached. Another natural rubber was obtained from the sap of the spruce trees: traditional chewed by American Indians.