History to Chew On

History to Chew On

Chew on This Dogs can chew bones. Cows can chew cud. But what can people chew? People can chew gum. Have you ever wondered where gum comes from, how it's made, and who first started chewing it?

The First Chewers Some people think the first people to chew gum were Americans, but that isn't true. Many years before Europeans discovered North America, people from different countries chewed all sorts of gummy stuff that came from plants. People from Greece chewed mastiche. Native peoples from South America chewed chicle. In India, betel was popular.

Native peoples from North America liked a sticky “ goo" made from the sap of spruce trees. Some Europeans who settled in North America found out about the goo, tried it, and liked it. You, however, may not have liked the spruce gum. It had very little taste. It wasn't until 1850 that John Curtis added flavor to “ spruce up" the spruce sap. He named it Maine Pure Spruce Gum and sold it to other North American settlers.

Gum Machines By 1871, chewing gum became so popular that Thomas Adams, a New York gum inventor and salesperson, invented a gum-making machine. Shortly thereafter, more machines were invented. Some of the machines released gum in the shape of balls when a coin was put into a slot. Others released gum in little sticks. Some of the gumball machines had a glass globe that made the gumballs look bigger than they really were.

What the inventors didn't expect was for the kids to learn how to stick their fingers into the machine to pluck a free gumball. It took Thomas Adams to figure out how to correct that mistake. He installed the first vending machines in New York subways in 1888.