The pieces of sugar were as hard as stone, and cutting them was quite dangerous. Separate pieces required special tools and dexterity. And then Jacob Christoph Rad in Moravia devised a cube-shaped sugar.
His wife was reportedly angry because she cut herself by cutting sugar to pieces so she could serve it to guests over coffee. She told him to finally invent something meaningful and to produce the sugar in such a form that it could easily be put into coffee, and he obeyed it.
The Rad spouses lived in Dačice, in the Habsburg Monarchy (today in the Czech Republic), and had 15 children. Jacob worked there as a director of a sugar refinery. He put the moist crystalline sugar in the mold, sprayed it and allowed it to dry. He invented devices for such a process, he obtained a patent for the press on January 23, 1843, with the right to use for five years.
Jacob Rad soon began producing sweet cubes. Women and children made up to 10,000 kg of sugar cubes daily. They were sold in Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic. As coffee grew in popularity, so did the demand for cubed sugar. In fact, the spread of coffee was key to selling sugar cubes.
