Thomas Adams, Sr. The birth of the modern day chewing gum industry can be traced to the s when Thomas Adams Sr. When Santa Anna was exiled from Mexico and came to the U. Santa Anna suggested to Adams that he create a formula to make carriage or bicycle tires by experimenting with chicle, a substance found in Central American sapodilla fruit trees.
The supply of chicle sat in a warehouse until Adams was inspired by a girl asking for chewing gum in a New York drugstore. He came up with the idea to use the chicle to make chewing gum. Until this time, chewing gum was made with spruce tree resin or paraffin wax.
In about , Adams and his son started making unflavored and unsweetened chicle chewing gum in the kitchen of their home, first rolling the chicle flat with a rolling pin and then cutting it into pieces with scissors. Thomas Jr. Their chicle gum was a success with consumers and soon reorders poured in.
In Adams registered U. With two of his sons, Thomas Jr. John Cadbury. John Cadbury was born in Birmingham, England, on 12th August He was from a Quaker family and did not have the option to go to university as this was against Quaker beliefs.
Instead he became an apprentice to a tea dealer in Leeds in Tea, coffee, cocoa and drinking chocolate were seen as healthy alternatives to alcohol, which as a Quaker he believed was bad for society. After several years, John decided to start manufacturing on a commercial scale. In he purchased a warehouse in nearby Crooked Lane. The earliest preserved price list from shows that he was selling 16 lines of drinking chocolate in cakes and powder format, and eleven lines of cocoa in powder, flakes, paste and cocoa nibs formats.
