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Aug 29, 2024 · In 1848, Curtis pioneered the commercial chewing gum industry by cooking his first batch on a Franklin stove, a cast-iron furnace invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1742 that had become a common fixture in American homes.
John B. Curtis. John Bacon Curtis (October 10, 1827 - June 13, 1897) was an American businessman and inventor. He was the first commercial gum producer. Curtis came up with how to use spruce gum and sell it like chewing gum.
John Bacon Curtis was the one who started it all – he ushered in the world of chewing gum, bringing the nation a new pastime and treat. In the process, he ignited many other firsts, most so commonplace we forget anyone could be first to do them.
In 1847, John Curtis, a European American in Maine, packaged the resin as “State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum,” making it the first commercial chewing gum in U.S. history. The Success of Spruce Gum. The spruce was so successful, Curtis built a factory to manufacture resin sticks.
- Overview
- Wrigley and Fleer Brought Chewing Gum to Millions
- The Food That Built America
People have been chewing gum, in various forms, since ancient times.
While colorful packs of chewing gum may seem like something dreamed up by a modern-day, real-life Willy Wonka, chewing gum has been used, in various forms, since ancient times.
There’s evidence that some northern Europeans were chewing birch bark tar 9,000 years ago—possibly for enjoyment as well as medicinal purposes, such as relieving toothaches. In the Americas, the ancient Mayan people chewed a substance called chicle, derived from the sapodilla tree, as a way to quench thirst or fight hunger, according to anthropologist Jennifer P. Mathews, author of Chicle: The Chewing Gum of the Americas. The Aztecs also used chicle and even had rules about its social acceptability. Only kids and single women were allowed to chew it in public, notes Mathews. Married women and widows could chew it privately to freshen their breath, while men could chew it in secret to clean their teeth.
How an Exile Brought Chewing Gum to America
In North America, indigenous people chewed spruce tree resin, a practice that continued with the European settlers who followed. In the late 1840s, John Curtis developed the first commercial spruce tree gum by boiling resin, then cutting it into strips that were coated in cornstarch to prevent them from sticking together. By the early 1850s, Curtis had constructed the world’s first chewing gum factory, in Portland, Maine.
As it turned out, spruce resin proved to be less-than-ideal for producing gum: It didn’t taste great and became brittle when chewed. Curtis and others who’d jumped into the gum business after him subsequently switched to ingredients such as paraffin wax.
In the 20th century, chewing gum made William Wrigley Jr. one of the wealthiest men in America. Wrigley started out as a soap salesman in his native Philadelphia. After moving to Chicago in 1891, he began offering store owners incentives to stock his products, such as free cans of baking powder with every order. When the baking powder proved a bigger hit than the soap, Wrigley sold that instead and added in free packs of chewing gum as a promotion.
In 1893, he launched two new gum brands, Juicy Fruit and Wrigley’s Spearmint. Because the chewing gum field had grown crowded with competitors, Wrigley decided he’d make his products stand out by spending heavily on advertising and direct marketing. In 1915, the Wrigley Company kicked off a campaign in which it sent free samples of its gum to millions of Americans listed in phone books. Another promotion entailed sending sticks of gum to U.S. children on their second birthday.
The competition also played a role in the development of bubble gum. Frank Fleer, whose company had made chewing gum since around 1885, wanted something different from his rivals and spent years working on a product that could be blown into bubbles. In 1906, he concocted a bubble gum he called Blibber-Blubber, but it proved to be too sticky. In 1928, a Fleer employee named Walter Diemer finally devised a successful formula for the first commercial bubble gum, dubbed Dubble Bubble.
Today, gum is sold in a variety of shapes and flavors. Although sadly, Willy Wonka’s three-course dinner chewing gum—said to taste like tomato soup, roast beef and blueberry pie—has yet to become reality.
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Dec 24, 2020 · In 1848, John B. Curtis became the first commercial gum manufacturer in New England, selling the very popular Maine Pure Spruce Gum. He remained the unchallenged champion of gum distribution until the 1870s, when an unlikely partnership led to the creation of his biggest rival.
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Chewing Gum: First Gum Made to be Sold. While early Greeks and Mayans found various substances to chew on, it was Native Americans chewing on resin from spruce trees that inspired John Curtis (1827-1897) to create the first chewing gum that was sold commercially.
