Dental “Floss”
When you think of a confection made entirely from sugar, you wouldn’t guess two dentists would have a hand in its creation. But “fairy floss,” as it was initially known, resulted from an 1897 collaboration between dentist William J. Morrison and confectioner John C. Wharton.
In 1904, the pair traveled from their native Nashville to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis to show off an electric candy-making machine they’d built in Wharton’s shop. National Geographic reports that the contraption unveiled in the Palace of Electricity isn’t much different from the ones used today.
A heater turns sugar into syrup, which is spun into 50-micron strands using centrifugal force. These fine strands are then collected before they recrystallize, resulting in the fluffy pink or blue treats known to fairgoers worldwide.
Morrison and Wharton sold over 68,000 boxes of fairy floss during the eight-month run of the St. Louis fair. Each small wooden box of candy cost 25 cents — half the price of a fair ticket. While not the most consequential machine demonstrated in St. Louis — that’d probably be the X-ray machine — Morrison and Wharton’s invention has certainly endured.
However, it would be perfected over the years. The original device tended to overheat and lose balance, which is why a second dentist plays a role in this story. In 1921, shortly before Morrison’s patent expired, Josef Lascaux attempted to redesign the machine. While he never filed a patent for his alterations, he sold his newly christened “cotton candy” out of his New Orleans office, mainly to the children he’d just performed dental work on. Somehow, the name stuck.
The legacy of the Electric Candy Machine has an interesting footnote, though. Though Lascaux thought there was room for improvement, the medical community thinks otherwise. In a paper published on the National Institute of Health’s National Library of Medicine website, seven scientists disclosed they’d used a tweaked cotton candy machine to produce artificial capillaries that kept cells alive for a week.
Their thin fibers, made from a gel-like substance, allowed tissues to develop so close to each other that they could thrive. While complex tissues like a heart or kidney have yet to be developed, it’s incredible to consider how 1890s tech is on the leading edge of regenerative medicine. That’s not too shabby for two guys without an engineering or medical degree.