Who invented sugar cubes?

LMS3018

Sugar cubes were invented in 1841 by Jakob Christian Rad, manager of the Daschitz sugar refinery in Bohemia. His wife had injured her finger breaking sugar from a sugar loaf and asked him to produce sugar in smaller pieces. Apr 09 06, 1:04 PM

Baloo55th

Henry Tate, from Chorley, Lancashire. Originally, sugar was sold in the form of sugar loaf (where Sugar Loaf Mountain gets its name from) which was a great bit lump of solid sugar. When people wanted a pound of sugar, the grocer had to saw off a piece, and then it had to be broken down at home. Tate had the idea of sawing a loaf up into little cubes in advance, so it saved time cutting and weighing. He ended up rather rich, founding the Tate Gallery. [After Tate and Lyle closed their refinery in Liverpool, no-one in Liverpool hardly would buy T & L sugar - Whitworth's and Silver Spoon were the only ones you could find on the shelves. Same sort of way, it took the Sun years before they could sell any copies in Liverpool after Hillsborough.] http://roberthamilton.pageout.net/user/www/r/o/roberthamilton/Sugar.html http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/SUS_TAV/TATE_SIR_HENRY_BART.html">http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/ Apr 09 06, 1:09 PM

Baloo55th

1840 for Rad according to http://xn--rzte-aktuell-fcb.de/index.php/Zucker for Rad (sorry, can't find an English language reference for this.) All the English language ones I've found credit Tate, but put the date at 1859 (when he would be 30.) http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/wshn/number6.html Things are confused here, as http://www.tateandlyle.com/TateAndLyle/our_business/history/history_timeline.htm says Tate introduced cubes in 1875, buying the rights from Germany. That refers to the angen process, whereas Tate is referred to elsewhere as cutting loaf into cubes while a grocer's apprentice (which he became at 20, which would be in 1839). Touch and go. Could be either Tate or Rad. Very difficult to get hard and fast info here. Apr 09 06, 1:32 PM

lanfranco

This question, incidentally, was asked and answered way back when. See #1220. Apr 09 06, 6:16 PM