Invention of Sugar Cube

Date of Issue : 6 March 2019

Here is a beautiful stamp for tea and coffee lovers featuring sugar cube which was  invented in Czech Republic. The stamp was recently issued on 6th March 2019. Here is the story of its invention !

After the end of the Napoleonic wars, attempts at extracting sugar from sugar beet were resumed in the Habsburg monarchy in the 1820s. The first modern type sugar manufacture in the western part of the Habsburg monarchy was founded in Kostelní Vydří nearby Dačice in the estate of Karel Maxmilián Dalberg in 1829. In 1833, František Grebner, with the financial support of Viennese banker J.B. Puthon, established a sugar refinery directly in Dačice. The Dačice refinery resumed the tradition of the sugar factory in Kostelní Vydří. Dačice sugar was supplied to Southwest Moravia, South and East Bohemia as well as to Austrian borderlands. Sugar was also sold from warehouses of the Dačice refinery established in Vienna, Pest, Lvov, and also in Brno. Jakub Kryštof Rad, the refinery director, established a manufacture of candied fruit, sweets, and chocolate in Dačice in 1841, in which he also involved his wife Juliana, in order to make better use of some of the sugar refinery products. 

The difficult-to-use shapes of sugar products, such as cones, hats, or loaves, made Jakub Kryštof Rad to come up with the idea of sugar cubes. Cone-shape sugar was impractical both for business and private use - cones were difficult to pack and easy to break. Also, attempts at cutting an exact amount of sugar were not always successful and a lot of sugar was wasted. The patent for the production of sugar cubes was soon acquired by Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Switzerland, and England. An improved form of Rad’s invention is still used by sugar refineries all around the world.