On December 28, 1836, Spain finally recognized the independence of its former colony, Mexico. However, today’s story will not be about Mexican liberation struggles, but about chewing gum. However, I did not mention the mentioned event by chance, because Mexico and Mexicans have played a very important role in the history of the creation and development of chewing gum.
In general, it can be said that mankind has always chewed and swallowed everything. We like to work our jaws and like to have a constant taste in our mouths. The ancient Greeks, for example, are said to have chewed mastic – the resin of the mastic tree. On the other side of the globe – in America – the Mayans who had reached a very high level of development chewed the thickened sap of the sapodilla tree, which was called chicle. Around 800 AD, the Mayan civilization collapsed under still unclear circumstances, but the art of chicle chewing was not forgotten. The tribes that began to develop their cultures on the ruins of the Mayan state in Central America did not abandon this custom either. Further north, the Indians also chewed similar substances – the resin of the largest spruce trees. This custom was also adopted from the aborigines by the white settlers. In 1848, the Curtis brothers first started the business of manufacturing chewing products in the state of Maine – first from resin, later increasingly using paraffin products. In 1850, they already had a fairly solid company with a couple of hundred workers, but Curtis’ products did not become particularly popular – a really attractive chewing gum made of resin and paraffin did not come out.
Twenty years later, the first chewing gum patent was issued in the United States to Ohio dentist William Finley Semple, who intended to produce a teeth-cleansing chewing gum from rubber, crushed licorice root, and powdered coal. The patent was issued on December 28, 1869, but the respected physician did not make it to production.
However, in the same year, other events took place, which became the beginning of the victory march of chewing gum around the world.
The habit of chewing chicle, inherited from the Mayan civilization, was not unknown to the Mexican politician and general Antonio López de Santaán, who in the middle of the 19th century became the head of the Mexican state several times, and not always in a completely democratic way. Several times he was forced to give up power and seek salvation in exile. In 1869, the exasperated dictator stayed in the United States and tried to start a business by importing large quantities of the already mentioned chicle from Mexico. Santaana thought that chicle could be used as a cheaper and more accessible raw material for rubber production. In this regard, he turned to the American inventor Thomas Adams and, according to some sources, even persuaded the American to immediately buy a ton of chicle imported from Mexico. In any case, it soon became clear that the rubber does not come out of the chicle. However, Adams had noticed that General Santana used to chew gum, and he caught a little girl doing the same. At that moment, Mr. Adams had the brilliant idea that rubber could come out of chicle, only not for raincoats and gaskets, but for chewing. And he was not mistaken – what the Mayans liked 2,000 years ago, the Americans of the 19th century also liked, and then the rest of the world’s population.
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2023-12-28 09:11:22
#day #history #patent #chewing #gum #issued
