by Ted Sherman

Created on: April 04, 2009   Last Updated: April 10, 2009

People at circuses and fairs eating cotton candy don't often question who invented the fluffy, sticky stuff they're trying to eat without getting it all over their faces. Some old legends claim cotton candy was first created by beekeepers in pre-histororic Africa. Those early humans observed something interesting as they gathered liquid honey from their hives. The gooey stuff tended to air-dry and stretch into threadlike strings, that could be manipulated into designs resembling spider webs. Then when vigorously spun around, the honey could be puffed up into cotton-like balls.

In some tribes, the practice took on festive, religious and ceremonial significance. Energetic tribal conjurers created clouds of the sweet fluff to the wonderment of fireside audiences. Tribal magicians claimed that spun-honey cotton candy had magic curative powers. To this day, there are many honey products that are supposed to have some of the same medical benefits.

Later versions of cotton candy, those based on sugar, appeared some ten centuries ago in the Middle East. When sugar cane crops became important elements of the rural economy, various products emerged, including many types of early sugar-based candies.

When making sugar to sweeten teas and coffees, experiments were attempted with liquid sugar to turn it into semi-solid forms. That may have been when creative people with fast hands could vigorously spoon the sugar around in a bowl and in the air until it congealed into spun fluffs. Various colorings, including red, blue, yellow and pink, added to the spun sugar appeal.

Today, as it was back in olden times, creating cotton candy is very simple to make, more so now because the process is much easier due to the invention of the electric cotton candy machine more than a century ago. Anyone who has visited a fair or circus, has watched with fascination as the magical concave metal cones spin around until the big white candy fluffs rise to magical heights.

The simple chemisty of the machine is that liquid sugar becomes solid threads as they're forced by hot air through rows of small holes, while the operator collects the spinning concotion onto the top portion of a stick. The various cotton candy machines went through different designs, and by different inventors, ranging from hand-turned to foot-pedal powered.

In 1900, inventor Thomas Patton applied for a patent involving a heated gas-turned spinning plate that spun liquid sugar into cotton candy. Patton became famous when his machines were introduced by the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus that year, and his face appeared on many of the circus handbills as the "magician of cotton candy".

Today, the famed circus still boasts of cotton candy machines, now powered by electricity, spinning at full tilt on its midway as it travels America. Additionally, hawkers go through the crowds in the stands offering the sweet treat to happy kids and adults alike. Maybe Elvis was thinking wistfully back to his boyhood days when he sang, "Sandman's comin'; yes, he's comin'. Take his magic hand. Now, goodnight. Now, sleep tight in cotton candy land."

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