Preview
Creation Date
1905
Description
In this lantern slide, sugar cubes are seen progressing down an assembly line through a drying kiln. Sugar has a long history of production, beginning in 8000 BC when sugarcane was first domesticated. For much of its history, sugar was compacted into sugar loaves, which people could cut chunks from to add to food or drinks. However, sugar loaves were highly compact, requiring the use of sharp and dangerous tools to remove pieces for use. In the nineteenth century, several inventors worked to design methods of creating safer and more convenient sugar alternatives, culminating in the creation of the sugar cube. In 1843, a Swiss inventor named Jakub Krystof Rad was the first to patent a method of creating sugar cubes by packing moist sugar into an ice tray device. However, this method still involved some cutting and Rad could not establish a successful business with his invention. It was not until 1879 that a method for creating sugar cubes without cutting was patented by Charles H. Hersey, whose Hersey drum would become a key component of sugar cube manufacturing even into the present day. The drying kiln, also known as Howard’s Vacuum Pan, was created by Edward Charles Howard, a British inventor who designed the machine to be a more efficient way of caramelizing and drying sugar cane. Being the last step of sugar manufacturing, the drying process dries out excess sugar cane juice and molasses from the sugar. This process determines the type of sugar being manufactured, since leaving more or less molasses in the granules determines both the coloring and sweetness of the sugar.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
