COAL TAR
Constantin Fahlberg was a chemist in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins University. In 1878 he spilled a derivative of coal tar on his hand. When he noticed that it tasted sweet, this set off a series of events, and long story short, saccharin was invented. Today you may know it as Sweet-n-Low.
Ben Eisenstadt owned a Navy Yard cafeteria in Brooklyn. After World War 2, he seemed to be going out of business. While out to lunch with his wife one day, she happened to say, “Wouldn’t it be nice if sugar came in individual bags, like tea?”. Eisenstadt thought that sugar packaging couldn’t be all that different from tea, and the sugar packet came to be.
To date, there have been over 500 billion little packets produced, and it is one of the most well-known artificial sweeteners in the U.S.
