Did you know that chewing gum has been around for thousands of years? Ancient civilizations, including the Greeks, Mayans, and Native Americans, chewed various substances like resin, tree sap, and sweet grasses for their flavor and medicinal properties. However, modern chewing gum as we know it today didn’t emerge until the 19th century.
The first commercial chewing gum was developed by American inventor Thomas Adams in the late 1800s. He initially experimented with chicle, a natural gum derived from the sapodilla tree, as a potential substitute for rubber. While his attempts to create a rubber substitute failed, Adams discovered that chicle could be flavored and sold as a chewing gum, leading to the birth of the chewing gum industry.
