sugar cubes were first made in the early 1840s by Jakub Kryštof Rad, director of a sugar-beet refinery in Dačice, Moravia (now in the Czech Republic). Sugar cones, though beautiful, were hard to break into handy pieces, and lumps cut with sugar nips varied considerably in size and shape. See servers, sugar. Rad experimented with pressing moist, grated sugar into something resembling a modern ice-cube tray: once completely dry, the cubes were ready for use. His innovation was so successful that he obtained a five-year patent for it in 1843. However, a few years later he moved to another enterprise, and his technique was gradually forgotten.
