<P> Although chewing gum can be traced back to civilizations around the world, the modernization and commercialization of this product mainly took place in the United States . The American Indians chewed resin made from the sap of spruce trees . The New England settlers picked up this practice, and in 1848, John B. Curtis developed and sold the first commercial chewing gum called The State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum . In this way, the industrializing West, having forgotten about tree gums, rediscovered chewing gum through the First Americans . Around 1850 a gum made from paraffin wax, which is a petroleum product, was developed and soon exceeded the spruce gum in popularity . To sweeten these early gums, the chewer would often make use of a plate of powdered sugar, which they would repeatedly dip the gum into to maintain sweetness . William Semple filed an early patent on chewing gum, patent number 98,304, on December 28, 1869 . </P> <P> The first flavored chewing gum was created in the 1860s by John Colgan, a Louisville, Kentucky pharmacist . Colgan mixed with powdered sugar the aromatic flavoring tolu, a powder obtained from an extract of the balsam tree (Myroxylon), creating small sticks of flavored chewing gum he named "Taffy Tolu". Colgan also lead the way in the manufacturing and packaging of chicle - based chewing gum, derived from Manilkara chicle, a tropical evergreen tree . He licensed a patent for automatically cutting chips of chewing gum from larger sticks: US 966,160 "Chewing Gum Chip Forming Machine" August 2, 1910 and a patent for automatically cutting wrappers for sticks of chewing gum: US 913,352 "Web - cutting attachment for wrapping - machines" February 23, 1909 from Louisville, Kentucky inventor James Henry Brady, an employee of the Colgan Gum Company . </P> <P> Modern chewing gum was first developed in the 1860s when chicle was brought from Mexico by the former President, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, to New York, where he gave it to Thomas Adams for use as a rubber substitute . Chicle did not succeed as a replacement for rubber, but as a gum, which was cut into strips and marketed as Adams New York Chewing Gum in 1871 . Black Jack (1884), which is flavored with licorice, Chiclets (1899), and Wrigley's Spearmint Gum were early popular gums that quickly dominated the market and are all still around today . Chewing gum gained worldwide popularity through American GIs in WWII, who were supplied chewing gum as a ration and traded it with locals . Synthetic gums were first introduced to the U.S. after chicle no longer satisfied the needs of making good chewing gum . By the 1960s, US manufacturers had switched to butadiene - based synthetic rubber, as it was cheaper to manufacture . </P> <P> Gum base composition is considered proprietary information known by select individuals within each gum - manufacturing company . Information about the other components of chewing gum are more accessible to the public and they are listed in Table 2 . </P>

Chewing gum is made from the sap of which tree
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