by Christine Pettaway

Created on: March 25, 2009   Last Updated: June 19, 2009

Fluffy clouds of assorted colors, mainly pink and blue, swirled softly around cardboard cones await customers at fair, carnival, and circus concessions. We are all familiar with this tasty, sticky treat known as cotton candy. A treat that melts the second you stuff its sweet strands into your mouth, but where did this unique, sugar, quenching delicacy come from?

Many say that two men from Tennessee by the names of John C. Wharton and William Morrison invented the first strands of "fairy floss", but the history of this wool-like candy traces as far back as the mid 18th century.

During this time cotton candy was made over a fire and not with a machine. Confectioners in Europe would take a lump of treble-refined sugargranulated sugar wasn't invented until World War Iand place it onto a platter. When the sugar was the consistency of water they would use a bowl and knife to carefully create syrup threads, which they crafted into webs. They then used the webs as Easter decorations or artistic ways to display desserts.

Nevertheless, Morrison and Wharton played a big part in the cotton candy industry. As a team, made up of dentist (Morrison) and candy maker (Wharton), they invented the first "electric candy machine" in 1897 and two years later had it patented. The machine liquefied sugar and then used centrifugal force to spin the melted sugar. After the spinning the sugar was strained through tiny holes producing "fairy floss".

Morrison and Wharton waited until the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 to introduce their "electric candy machine" and its sugar strings to the public. They sold the "fairy floss" out of wood boxes for 25 cents apiece. Their sugar sensation skyrocketed allowing them to sell 68,655 boxes. Today, their profit would be a small amount, but back then $17,163.75 was a large chunk of change.

Of course, the "candy floss" craze didn't stop there. In 1900, a man by the name of Thomas Patton revolutionized the European way of creating the candy and invented a gas fired rotating plate to spin caramelized sugar. He then formed the candy threads with a fork. Like Morrison and Wharton, Patton had his invention patented and introduced it to a more than thrilled crowd at the Ringley Bros. Circus.

Another man by the name of Joseph Delarosa Lascaux, from New Orleans, also jumped on the idea of spun sugar, around 1920. Although some say that his invention was never patent, New Orleans' citizens would say that this is the man responsible for

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