[meteorite-list] Scalecube Family
From: Matthias Bärmann <majbaermann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 14:16:55 +0100 Message-ID: <000b01c822d2$cd54ea70$0200a8c0_at_ibmtp23> of course, martin.and here we have a monument, celebrating the synthesis of wuerfelzucker & fusion crust: http://www.welt.de/multimedia/archive/00194/Gregor-Schneider_DW_194337g.jpg ----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Altmann" <altmann at meteorite-martin.de> To: "'mexicodoug'" <mexicodoug at aol.com>; <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com> Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 12:55 PM Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Scalecube Family Dear Doug, a really excellent synopsis! Some illustrations: Here we have the monument in Dacice, commemorating the production of the first sugar cube: http://www.zuckersammler.de/gfx/tauschtage/dacice_03_01.jpg A pilgrimage site for sugar cube fanatics from all over the World. These first produced cubes became popular as "Viennese Sugar Cubes" ("Wiener W?rfelzucker"). Sugar cubes are an important field of private collecting, The number of collectors worldwide is estimated to exceed 2 million individuals, - compare to the 1000-2000 meteorite collectors in existence; the largest collections unite up to 150,000 specimens and locales. Indeed, as you presumed, the today's brand: Diamant-Zucker is still in the possession of the descendants of Eugen Langen, who improved 1870 the T cube production with his "Langen'schen W?rfelverfahren" (and designed btw the Wuppertal Schwebebahn, the Steel Dragon). In dissociation to the Viennese Cube, he named his cubes "Cologne Cubes". http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/e/eb/Eugen-langen.jpg Today the Viennese Cubes are still a standard unit to visualize the sugar content of food and drinks in an equipollent of sugar cubes. (1 can of Coke contains 13 sugar cubes). The weight of the Viennese Cube in that case is 3.7 grams. (See also your 3.6grams of C&H and Dixie Crystals cubes). Unfortunately I couldn't find the edge length of the Viennese standard cube (The Viennese Ur-cube was caramelized by the marauding mob during the Viennese October Revolt in 1848) >From an unsecured source I read, that Diamant-Zucker, therefore the >founders of the Cologne cube, is selling nowadays cuboids of roughly 1cm x 2cm x 2cm with a weight of 2grams (or so) as standard, hence half cubes. Here we have a painting, depicting Howard experimentalizing the ablation of meteorites while their fiery descents and the forming of flight-oriented shapes by dint of sugar. http://www.elvis-paintings.de/gfx/bilder/celebrity_art_ruehmann.jpg Here a modern construction of the test arrangement http://www.issuemanagement.de/images/feuerzangenbowle.jpg Side-product was the conical sugar loaf: http://home.clara.net/mawer/image-sugarloaf2.jpg but that's another chapter, Sugar... Best! Martin -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht----- Von: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com [mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von mexicodoug Gesendet: Freitag, 9. November 2007 06:33 An: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com Cc: Martin Altmann Betreff: Re: [meteorite-list] Scalecube Family Dear List, Hmmm. Very meteorite related! Now for a fun post. Great history on the Scale Cube, Svend, and thanks Mike for the additional information! Given all the interest in scale cubes, I've compiled a history of the scale cube prior to the ones developed by the Russians and NASA (it is below my answer to Martin's question). There wasn't much info available on your sites about what was used before NASA, except the cube that Mike Jensen kindly posted regarding Haro's Heros. These cubes are definitely related to meteorites, more than many will probably even know. But first: Martin foreshadowed: "(are sugar-cubes in USA metric?)" No, they are not, unless you measure them with a centimeter ruler :-) In the US they are actually certified scale cubes. They are loosely 1/2 or 1 Tea-spoon amounts of sugar, which scale to one cup of Tea. I don't think the ones in Europe are a centimeter cubed either, for that matter, are they? That would be a real diet lite cube being just 0.8 to 1.1 grams... Now a question for you: German Zuckerw?rfels aren't even cubes, are they? and how many/what dimensions are in a 500g box that sells for under what $2 ( In the US sugar cubes are one cent each.)? http://www.wopping.com/images/product/1483.jpg . Maybe at least Diamant W?rfelzuckers (which have a pedigree back to Langen)? About the original scale cube. These were actually first crystallized as "T Cubes" or Tea Cubes, and they were literally covered in Tea that was underlied with a saucer. By Victorian times they were the de facto scale cube of choice in Europe to measure size. The material of construction was, in fact, sugar. The first application was a non-hazardous fixed aliquot of sugar for a nice cup of tea. But I am getting ahead of myself... Sugar was introduced by conquering Moroccans into Europe during the conquest of Spain in about 800 AD. Christopher Columbus had an steamy affair with Beatriz in the Canary Islands on the way to discover the Americas and delayed continuing on the maiden voyage a month so he could romantically take some of here sugarcane, which he brought to the new world with him to remember her. (Columbus was a sugar broker in Genoa.) However, for the first ~1500 years, the process to make sugar didn't lend to cube-making due to all the sticky and wasted carmel produced in the boiling kettles as syrup was concentrated. This all changed when the first prototype modern sugar cubes were reputedly invented by Edward C. Howard in 1813. Mr. Howard, an inspiration for the future Edisons of the world, invented the "Howard Vacuum-Pan" - the most important development in the history of sugar to the present day, from which he greatly increased his wealth by enforcing the patents. It is actually an enclosed and sealed metal vat allowing sugar syrup to be produced from plant extract by driving off the water at only 55 C (Instead ove 100+ C) under partial vacuum pressures resulting in a more uniform crystalline form easily set in moulds. This process is still used worldwide (utilizing a staged modification ca. 1830 invented by a free African-American scientist) and makes in the necessary syrup for easy and uniform granulations. T-Cube making requires a uniform granulate that is being dried, mixed with a trace amount of syrup again, and then pressed. NASA honored the T cubes by placing the letter "T" on top of every scale cube it produced. The young Englishman Howard, got into laying these sweet foundations after Joseph Banks, a well known meteorite collector, gave him three meteorites to analyze: Sienna (Italy, 1794, LL5), Benares (India, 1798, LL4) and the recently fallen Wold Cottage (UK, 1795, L6). Banks, a serious collector came across the Wold Cottage mass being exhibited in London along with written declarations by witnesses to the fall, and hired Howard in 1800 to see if these stones that were said to have fallen from the sky were similar, as the geology of the areas was different. Howard had just invented a potent explosive and won a medal of honor, and had an aristocratic background, so Banks thought he was the right young man for the job. The meteorite got Howard more interested in metal alloys when he studied the similar metals in them, and uniquely placed him to set the foundations of producing engineering vats and vessels that culminated with the landmark Vacuum-Pan http://home.clara.net/mawer/vacuum.jpg and other applications he developed in his real jobs for the next dozen years (Howard was more a chemical mercenary than a meteoriticist), and always kept a keen eye open for better metallic alloys ever since he made a few quid working for the meteorite collector Banks. Michael Farady was inspired by Howard et. al.'s analyses and in the 1820's played with these metals, alloys (including meteorites which he was interested in) and electricity, and then figured out how to generate electricity around 1831 using a wrapped metal core. Howard's labor in meteorites was peeked by the analysis of different natural iron alloys, and in many of them he identified an interesting alloying with nickel. He really didn't know what to make of this, but he noticed that there were similar compositions of the metallic components no matter where the stone or natural metal was found in some cases. So he declared in public in front of the stoodgy establishment, plainly, that it just fell out of the sky under unknown circumstances, as was suggested by some of his sources for the materials. By 1805, these stony and metalline substances that had fallen on the Earth became known as meteoric stones and shortly later meteoric irons, thanks to British Howard and French Proust's (also looking for new metals and alloys) unspecified material from the sky idea. Later, people got tired of saying meteoric stone and just called it meteorite for short, forever preserving the initial beliefs of the infamous debate of 1802-1803 begun by Howard among the London scientific aristocracy. For this, Howard became a Howardite, after dumped meteorites like a hot-potato as an avocation, but Prost remained a Frenchman, and Biot got most of the credit posthumously for something already gaining wide acceptance when he wrote his adventure story, on L?igle, instead of just a boring chemical analysis like Howard and others had done before him. Ref: Howard, E. C., Bournon, J. L. and Williams, J. L. 1802. Experiments and observations on certain stony and metalline substances, which at different times are said to have fallen on the Earth; also on various kinds of native iron. "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London", Vol. 92, pp. 168-212. Genesis of Production T-Cubes. It took a while for sugar refineries to catch up with the more expensive initially patented process used by Howard. The recent use and technology of sugar beet refining to make sugar established central Europe's place as an industry. Once such refinery in present day Moravia, Czech Republic, had somewhat updated theirs was run by a the Swiss Jakub Rad, from Rhreinfelden, working in Dacice (In German: Datschitz), right across the border from Austria. In 1841, one year into his new position as Director after coming from Vienna, Juliana, Jakub's wife, cut her finger while sawing a loaf of sugar and preparing his lunch and that of their 16 children. Loaves of sugar were the common ways to distributed sugar pretty much from the beginning up until then. Irately, she chased him back to work and sat the managers and Jakub down, waving her bloody finger. Jakub listened and she received the first box of sugar cubes by Christmas that same year. A year and a half later the plant was in full production with a patented press making Tea-cubes. These were the first officially produced T-Cubes in the history of humanity. Next, there was the German improvement on Rad's pressing process for production of cubes. The German industrialist Eugen Langen got into the business in 1870, and invented a better method for T-cube production and implemented this in his sugar beet factories and it became even a bigger hit. The English finally took notice. Henry Tate licensed the Langen method for making precision T-Cubes and built a refinary on the Thames River which opened in 1878 to produce precision cubes, the English appropriated immediately the idea as their own and Tea Cube production was booming. Tate's company later merged with its principal competitor, Lyle and formed what still is Europes biggest sugar company and Tea Cube producer - Tate & Lyle. Meanwhile, in the USA, as usual, the Germans dominated the technology of making sugar like they did in Europe..... In 1799 the German William Havenmeyer started running Mr. Seaman's sugar refinery in New York after leaving his position in London. However, he was not particularly creative and failed to see the significance of the T-cubes in a 1799 London while Wold Cottage was on display - though a meteorical storm was certainly brewing that would make T-cubes a hit. On the contrary, Havenmeyer and his successor cronies settled on using cheap negro and immigrant labor and monopolizing the sugar production by the same textbook that Bill Gates studied. It wasn't until 1906, that the company he founded, put sugar cubes into massive production in America in the leading company, which today is the Domino Food Group (the market leader in sugar in the US for over a century). If we assume finely granulated sugar pressed into cubes by Domino Sugar has a density of 1.0 g/cm3 and they sell 198 in a one pound bag (2.291 g/cube), that would make a volume of 2.78 cm3 per cube, or 1.32 cm length of a side. A half inch is 1.27 cm. So it is close, but, 2.291 grams is intended as an estimate of the half the amount of sugar most people prefer in their tea, as to use two T-cubes, a.k.a., close to a teaspoon of sugar. Domino also makes another bigger T-cube, close to twice as heavy at 4.725 grams each. This is close to the one teaspoon cube and preferred sweetening amount, but doesn't allow for those with a lesser sweet tooth.. The other US company C&H and Dixie Crystals cubes there are 126 in a one pound box = 3.6 grams each. (_at_ 1.0 g/mL that's 1.53 cm on a side). These dimensions are estimates based on the density I am using, but I would be surprised if the length of the side were off more than 1 millimeter (7%). Finally, here's a couple of pictures of modern Tea-cube producing machines: http://www.aquarius.nl/page323.aspx http://www.suedzucker.de/images/bilder/faq/zuckersorten/glueckswuerfel.jpg Finally, any, dealers in meteorites after reading this, when illustrating their Howardites, could certainly could sweeten the deal by including these cubes with purchases. A Tea-cube is a must when scaling any Howardite, lest we should forget the man's real passion. And it is true that a T-cube was the most common scale reference right up to the Russian and NASA productions! W?rfelly yours, Doug ----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Altmann" <altmann at meteorite-martin.de> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com> Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 6:39 AM Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Scalecube Family Mike, the Scherff-cube is missing in your collection, was the most used meteorite-cube before the Buhl-cube. (Got blue edges with time). Best! Martin (are sugar-cubes in USA metric?) -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht----- Von: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com [mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von Mike Bandli Gesendet: Donnerstag, 8. November 2007 02:17 An: 'Meteorite List' Betreff: [meteorite-list] Scalecube Family On June 21, 2007 Paul wrote: "I have to wonder if ten years from now, there will be people collecting the different types of scalecubes/centimeter cubes as people on this list are collecting meteorites." Ten years? How about five months! My Scalecube family: http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-11/877141/cubes.jpg >From left to right: Buhl 1cm Cube, Unknown 1cm Cube, NASA 'Scale Block' 1 inch Cube, Drake 1 inch Certified Cube, Drake 1cm Cube, Drake 1cm prototype. Kudos to Drake D. for building such a great 1 inch cube! Its well worth the money and perfect for other scientific/forensic photography. What strange hobbies I have... Kind regards, Mike Bandli www.Astro-Artifacts.com ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list Received on Fri 09 Nov 2007 08:16:55 AM PST |
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