In 1848, John B. Curtis made and sold State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum, the first commercial chewing gum. By 1850 he was selling flavored paraffin gums, which grew in popularity surpassing the spruce gum. Almost 142 years ago, this month (1869), the first chewing gum patent, U.S. Patent # 98304 was issued to William Finley Semple. Adding sugar to petroleum-derived paraffin made it sweeter, but they were not sufficiently chewy and so the manufacturers turned to the chewy stuff, tree sap, again...
Read Full Story