Chewing Gum - Keeping Jaws Moving For Centuries

Why do people chew gum? To settle nerves, sweeten the breath, aid digestion, clean the teeth, the reasons are many. Whatever the reason, folks have been chewing on various substances for thousands of years:

• At archaeological sites in northern Europe, evidence of lumps of birch bark tar (a black sticky residue left over from burnt birch bark) have been found with teeth marks in them that date back roughly 9,000 years ago.
• Why ancient people began chewing this tar isn't known for sure, but some of the theories are that there might have been a narcotic effect of the tar, or that it had a medicinal effect.   
• Ancient Greeks chewed the resin of the mastic tree to help clean teeth and sweeten the breath. 
• The sap of the sapodilla tree, or chicle, has been used for chewing for thousands of years by the peoples of southern Mexico and Central America.  
• Native Americans chewed the resin of the spruce tree and taught the first white settlers how to use it to slake thirst.
• For easier chewing, early American settlers mixed spruce resin with beeswax. The idea was expanded upon by John Bacon Curtis in Maine, who created the first commercially made chewing gum. It was made from spruce resin, beeswax and flavorings in 1848 and was called The State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum. 
•  Curtis used paraffin to replace spruce resin in 1850, and this new combination became more popular than his original gum. 
• When chicle failed as a substitute for rubber, dentist William F. Semple added flavoring to it and created the first chicle-based chewing gum. Semple was not the first to patent a formula for chewing gum, but he was the first to patent (in 1869) and produce a commercial gum.  Among many ingredients named in the patent that could be combined with the chicle to produce the gum are listed chalk and charcoal.
• In 1882 Dr. Edward Beeman added pepsin powder to chewing gum to help hold in the flavor and to act as a digestive aid.
• Frank Fleer developed the first formula for bubble gum in the middle of the 19th century but it wasn't put on the market until Walter Diemer refined the formula in 1928. He called the gum Double Bubble.
• William Wrigley Jr. started the Wrigley Chewing Gum Company in Chicago, IL. in 1891. It went on to become the single largest manufacturer and seller of chewing gum in the world.
• Chewing gum became very popular at the turn of the 20th century, and American soldiers stationed oversees in WW I helped spread it to Europe.
• The first sugarless gum was created in the 1950's by dentist Dr.Petrulis. He sold his company to the Wrigley Company in the 1960's.
• Topps bubble gum company started to include cards of professional baseball players with their gum in 1951.
•  As of the year 2012, there are 3.74 trillion pieces of chewing gum manufactured world-wide every year; annual sales of chewing gum world-wide is 19 billion dollars, and Wrigley's Chewing Gum Company accounts for 35% of all chewing gum manufactured world-wide. 
• Dentists encourage the chewing of gum as an aid to good dental health, as long as it's sugar-free gum. Chewing gum helps stimulate the flow of saliva, a natural way to help rid teeth of plaque and bacteria, as well as helping to dilute acids that can erode tooth enamel. 
• Since 2004, chewing gum has been banned in Singapore. Only gum that is of therapeutic value and prescribed by a physician is allowed. 
Chewing Gum

The History Of Aspirin

One of the most common of medications has a long and varied history. Some facts and history about Aspirin:

• The Father of modern Medicine, Hippocrates, wrote about pain killers in the 5th century B.C.E. and mentioned a powder and tea made from the bark and leaves of the white willow tree that worked for headaches, pain and fever.
• In 1829 scientists discovered that it was the compound called salicin in the willow and other plants that worked on headache, fever and pain.
• Salicin was further chemically reduced to obtain pure salicylic acid, the actual substance that worked on pain and fever.
• Pure salicylic acid was very hard on the stomach, so further research to combine it with another substance to make it more tolerable for the stomach lead to the production of acetylsalicylic acid. 
• In 1899 Felix Hoffman, a German chemist that worked for the German dye and drug manufacturer Bayer found out that acetylsalicylic acid helped his father's arthritis pain.  He persuaded the company to manufacture the drug and it was patented in 1900.  The compound was given the name Aspirin - "A" from acetyl, "spir" from the spirea plant from which salicin was extracted, "in" was a common ending for drug names.
• Aspirin in powder form was distributed to physicians and soon became the number one drug in the world.
• By 1915 Aspirin was manufactured in tablet form and could be bought without a prescription.
• At one time the Bayer company held the trademark rights to both Aspirin and Heroin (before it became illegal)
• Aspirin's reputation as a pain and fever reducer was increased during the world-wide Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-1919.
• In 1948 a general practitioner  in California noticed that patients that he prescribed aspirin had a reduced incidence of heart attacks.  He started to recommend taking aspirin for heart health. 
• In 1952 children's chewable aspirin was introduced.
• Aspirin's popularity waned in the early 1950's after the introduction of acetaminophen and ibuprofen.
•  In the early 1970's, scientists discovered that aspirin inhibits the production of inflammation-causing chemicals called prostaglandins in the body, thus reducing pain.
• When research showed that daily aspirin therapy helped prevent at-risk patients from having heart attacks, strokes and recurring heart attacks, aspirin sales increased.
• Today more than 70 million pounds of aspirin are produced world wide per year, which makes it the most used drug in the world.
• There are no major European or United States manufacturers of generic aspirin. Even the mainstay brand Bayer aspirin is made in Spain . China is the world's largest producer of aspirin.
Aspirin

The History Of Silly Putty

The history of Silly Putty goes back to 1940 after the Japanese invaded the rubber-producing countries of the Far East and cut off the supply to the United States. With the subsequent hampering of war production, especially for tires, gas masks, rafts and boots, the government asked American industry to develop a synthetic rubber. 

Here's where the story gets controversial, for there was more than one person who claimed the discovery of Silly Putty.  Researchers for Dow Corning  Company and  General Electric Company both claimed discovery. The present manufacturer of Silly Putty, Crayola LLC, gives the credit to James Wright, a Scottish inventor that worked for General Electric in New Haven Connecticut in 1943.

The first Silly Putty was the result of the mixing of boric acid and silicone oil.  Wright found that the material would stretch if slowly pulled, but break if pulled rapidly. Rolled into a ball it would bounce, would not mold and had a high melting point. Despite these properties, Wright determined the substance was not suited for use as a rubber substitute and he sent samples to other scientists that came to the same conclusion.

The story goes that some of the substance was obtained by an owner of a toy store, Ruth Fallgatter.  She hired a marketing consultant, Peter Hodgson to market the bouncing putty and put it in her catalog. It out sold everything else in the catalog except for Crayola crayons, but Fallgetter did not continue to sell it. Hodgson saw its potential, and bought $147 worth of the substance. He named it Silly Putty, packed 1 ounce portions in plastic eggs that sold for a dollar each, and sold 250,000 of them in three days.  But the new business almost went under in 1951 with the start of the Korean War, as silicone, a primary ingredient of Silly Putty, was rationed.

After the war, production resumed. It was originally marketed as an adult item, but by 1955 children became the primary customers. The first advertisement for Silly Putty was produced by Hodgson in 1957 and premiered on The Howdy Doody Show.

In1961 Silly Putty went world wide and became a hit in Europe and The Soviet Union.  By the time Hodgson  died in 1976, over 300 million eggs of Silly Putty had been sold and his business was worth $140 million, making it one of the most successful toys of the 20th Century.  The following year Binney and Smith, the makers of Crayola crayons, bought the rights to it.  By 1987, production of Silly Putty was in excess of 2 million eggs annually. So while the name may be 'silly', the profits generated by this toy that was created by accident certainly aren't!

Silly Putty

The Whoopee Cushion - A Tribute and Short History

Consider the whoopee cushion, also referred to as the Poo Poo Cushion and Razzbery Cushion. An object of disgust for some, merriment for others. Invented around 1950 by two employees of the Jem Rubber Company of Toronto Canada, goofing around with scrap pieces of rubber sheeting. Sounds like it was a fun place to work. The company tried to sell the new device to Sam Adams, founder of the S.S.Adams Novelty Company. But Sam Adams refused, saying the item was too vulgar and would never sell. But other companies that Jem Rubber approached did not think the same way. The rest is history.

So what is the mystique of the whoopee cushion? Flatulence has never been proper behavior in public, at least for many people. Things that are not proper are wide open to the imagination of folks with a sense of humor. Flatulence jokes are found in the plays of the 5th century BC playwright Aristophanes, in the writings of Homer, Geoffrey Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales, in the Arabic tales translated by Sir Richard Burton Tales of 1001 Nights, Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain both included references to the fart in their writings. Famous company for such low brow humor, I'd say.

My first experience with a whoopee cushion was brought about by my Dad, one of the great practical jokesters and pranksters I ever knew. When us kids were called in to supper, we never knew what was in store. A dribble glass, a pile of rubber dog doo doo on our plates, soup spoons with clear plastic inserts that soup would roll off of, a telescopic fork that Dad would extend to swipe food off your plate, rubber vomit. And between meals was no different. Chinese Finger Traps , Joy Buzzers, cans of mixed nuts that when opened out shot a long snake. By the time us kids were old enough to leave home, we had pretty much seen it all, prankster wise anyway. Some of us had enough of the pranks when we were kids, some of us were hooked on them. I confess to being hooked on them.

There were primarily two companies that sold these types of pranks over the years. The aforementioned S.S. Adams,which began business in 1906, and Johnson Smith Company that began business in 1914. Both companies are now out of business, but some of S.S Adams novelty gags are still sold. Johnson Smith at one time published  a 500+ page catalogue full of novelties and gags in the 1920's, and my Dad used to order things from his childhood days until a few years before his death in 1993. Some comments from the Johnson Smith Company:

"Our story is not without sociological aspects and influences. During the 1920s and 1930s, practical jokes and home hobbies provided an escape for people wracked with economic struggle brought on by WWI and the Great Depression. Our catalog provided hours of "escape," fun and fantasy for the depressed nation, even without having to order! Even today we hear from people who remember our catalog and the "relief" we provided!" 

So there you have it. Sociological aspects from pranks and jokes, including the whoopee cushion! There are also the technological aspects of this that should not be ignored. The original whoopee cushion, made from rubber and inexpensive, is still available, but the old technology has given way to the remote control whoopee cushion! While there is always a price to pay for technology, the modern version has 15 different sounds, can be operated with the remote control up to fifty feet away. But there is still room for the original version of the whoopee cushion. It does take a certain degree of skill in use, and there are ways of getting different noises from the original whoopee cushion. For the purist, the original. For everyone else, the remote control version. Or if you're into record-setting, the giant Guinness World Record largest whoopie cushion:

So whether the results of using a whoopee cushion (either the vintage or new-fangled style) make you laugh, cringe, or turn away in disgust the whoopee cushion is here to stay.
Whoopee Cushions

Buttons - History and Facts

When did buttons begin to be used? What was used to secure clothing before them? Some history and facts about the button:

• Button-like objects have been found in the Indus Valley of ancient Pakistan and date back to around 2000 B.C.E. These were not used for fasteners, but for ornaments. Before buttons were used for fastening, pins, leather lacing and belts were used to secure clothing.
• Before buttons could be used as fasteners, the button hole had to be devised. Evidence dates the first button and button hole closure systems to the 13th century in Germany. This may have been a solution to the problem of how to secure clothing that was becoming more and more form-fitting, without having to resort to sharp pins.
• As with most anything that is new, they became a fad. Buttons and button holes covered the clothing of the well to do. The number of them and what they were made out of became a status symbol. It has been rumored that King Louis XIV of France spent over $5 million on them in his lifetime.
• Ever wonder why men's suit coats have non-functioning buttons sewn on the sleeves? Some say they are just for decoration, but there is also the story that King Frederick The Great of Prussia started the practice in the 18th century. The rumor goes that after an inspection of his troops, he ordered that buttons be sewn on the sleeves of their coats to discourage them from wiping their noses on them.
• The Scovill Manufacturing Company in America made a set of gold buttons with the profile of George Washington on them that were presented to Marquis de Lafayette during his U.S. visit in 1824.
• With the increased cost of ivory in the 19^th century, button manufacturers began to make them out of a nut from a specific kind of palm tree in South America. This is called vegetable ivory, or corozo. When the nut is dried, it is a very reasonable facsimile for genuine ivory, and is still used today.
• The first buttons made from celluloid, one of the first types of plastics, were made in the 1860's.
• Before World War One, most button manufacturing was done in Europe, specifically England. After the war, the United States became the center of button making until modern times.

Buttons