Where, may I ask, would the world be today without chewing gum??? No, really. It might sound strange, but if you think about it, we all like to chew on things like pens, pencils, straws, ice cubes, fat from meat, tobacco, candy, food... well, maybe we don't all like to chew on these things, but there is one thing that just about everybody does like to chew. Though so many people enjoy chomping their teeth on gum, there are very few who actually know the history of it. It is my personal delight, therefore, to enlighten you on (drum roll) the grand account of the history of gum.
Thomas Adams, a photographer and creative inventor, had been attempting for several years to create more durable carriage tires with rubber and chicle, a sticky material taken Sapota Trees in Mexico. In 1869, when Adams happened to stick a piece of that chicle in his mouth to chew on while thinking, he found that it wasn't half bad. Immediately, he was thinking of ways to market this substance and add flavor to it. Withing two years he had created his own factory for mass production of "Adams New York No. 1" chewing gum.
Though Adams is credited with the formation of the first factory for gum, he was not the first to come up with it. Apparently, even the ancients in Greece and Rome needed something to chew on and found satisfaction from the sap of the mastic tree. So too, Mayans and North American Indians had created their own versions of gum. It was John B. Curtis, however, who actually made and sold the first chewing gum in 1848. William Finley Semple, on the other hand, was the first man to patent gum doing so on December 28, 1869.
Nearly 150 years later, chewing gum is still a hot commodity and people just can't stop chewing it. So again I must ask the question, where would the world be today without chewing gum???
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