How Sweet It Is: Sugar, Science, and the State

Summary

Americans import large amounts of sugar, levy a stiff tariff on it, and base this tariff on the saccharine content of each sample, and thus the assessment of sugar quality for tax purposes was enormously important. It was also among the most difficult challenges of a scientific or technical nature facing the federal government in the nineteenth century, and the issues it raised would often recur as science-based quality control became an essential feature of industry.

Notes

¹R.R. Bowker, ‘A Lump of Sugar’, Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 73 (1886), 72–95, on 94. Congressional Record, 61st Congress, first session, pp. 2354–2379, on 2379.

²Richard Pares, Yankees and Creoles: the Trade Between North America and the West Indies Before the American Revolution (London, 1956).

³Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar, 2 vols (London, 1949–1950), II, 461. Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York, 1999), 72, 120–123, 170.

⁴Oliver M. Dickerson, The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution (New York, 1963).

⁵Richard Peters, ed., Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America, 8 vols (Boston, 1845), I, 24–27. For the British tariff, see Deerr (note 3), II, chapter xxvii.

⁶US Congress, Senate, Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, in Compliance with a Resolution of the Senate, of the 26th April, 1832, in Relation to Frauds Upon the Treasury Introducing Sugar into the United States in the Form of Syrup, 22nd Congress, first session, Report 139. Treasury Circular #56 dated October 8, 1831, US National Archives and Records Administration (hereinafter NARA), RG 56, entry 48, vol. 10. Benjamin Silliman, Manual on the Cultivation of the Sugar Cane and the Fabrication and Refinement of Sugar (Washington, DC, 1833), 36–37.

⁷ Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury Communicating a Report of Chemical Analysis of Sugars, Molasses, &c., and of Researches on Hydrometers Made under the Superintendence of Professor A. D. Bache (Washington, DC, 1845), 23–48. Ventzke, ‘On the Different Varieties of Sugar, and Allied Substances, with Reference to the Practical Application of Their Optical Relations’, Journal of the Franklin Institute, 10 (1845), 258–268, 332–341; this was translated from the German by Booth and Boyé, and communicated to the Franklin Institute by McCulloh. ‘Report on Jos. S. Lovering & Co.'s Double refined sugars’, Journal of the Franklin Institute, 10 (1845), 404–405.

⁸ Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, in Compliance with a Resolution of the Senate, Relative to Frauds in Recent Importations of Sirups and Molasses from the West India Islands, and the Measures Necessary to Be Adopted to Prevent Their Recurrence (Washington, DC, 1846). The Treasury Circular of 12 May 1843 is mentioned in [R.S. McCulloh] to A.D. Bache, 26 July 1846, NARA, RG 167, entry 14, box 1.

⁹ Report of the Secretary of the Treasury Communicating a Report of Scientific Investigations Relative to the Chemical Nature of Saccharine Substances and the Art of Manufacturing Sugar (Washington, DC, 1847).

¹⁰[McCulloh] in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 4 (1847), 349–351.

¹¹ Reports from the Secretary of the Treasury of Scientific Investigations in Relation to Sugar and Hydrometers, Made under the Superintendence of Professor A. D. Bache (Washington, DC, 1848).

¹² Reports from the Secretary of the Treasury, of Scientific Investigations in Relation to Sugar and Hydrometers, Made, under the Superintendence of Professor A. D. Bache, by Professor R. S. McCulloh (Washington, DC, 1848). See also J.B. Soleil, ‘Nouvel appareil propre à la mesure des déviations dans les expériences de polarisation rotatoire’, Comptes rendus de l'académie des sciences, 21 (1845), 426–430. ‘Description du nouveau saccharimètre de M. Soleil, opticien’, Bulletin de la société d'encouragement de l'industrie nationale, 45 (1846), 543–549; ‘Rapport fait par M. de Becquerel, au nom du comité des arts économiques, sur un saccharimètre présenté par M. Soleil’, 46 (1847), 545–552; and J. Babinet, ‘Rapport sur le saccharimètre de M. Soleil’, Comptes rendus de l'académie des sciences, 26 (1848), 162–168. For Soleil, see Paolo Brenni, ‘Soleil, Duboscq, and Their Successors’, Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, 51 (1996), 7–16, on 8–9; this based, in part, on the effusive account of Soleil in l'Abbé Moigno, Saccharimétrie, optique, chimique et mélassimetrique (Paris, 1869). Saccharimeters were also referred to as polariscopes or saccharometers.

¹³J.B. Benjamin, ‘Soleil's Saccharometer’, DeBow's review, 5 (1848), 347–364, quoted, in part, in J. A. Heitmann, The Modernization of the Louisiana Sugar Industry, 1830–1910 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1987), p. 31. W.P. Riddell, ‘On Soleil's saccharimeter’, American Journal of Science, 15 (1853), 175–186.

¹⁴J.B. Soleil and J. Duboscq, ‘Note sur un nouveau compensateur pour le saccharim□tre’, Comptes rendus de l'académie des sciences, 31 (1850), 248–50. Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, Reports by the Juries (London, 1852), p. 272. Duboscq, Catalogue systematique des appareils d'optique (Paris, 1864), 27.

¹⁵‘Science and Its Uses’, New York Times, 15 November 1852, 2. See also ‘The Obligations of Sugar-Refiners and Consumers to Physics and Chemistry’, Manufacturer and Builder, 3 (1871), 78; ‘Polarized Light and the Application of the Polariscope to the Refining of Sugar’, 98–100; and ‘The Manufacture of Sugar’, 268–269.

¹⁶‘The New Tariff’, New York Times, 17 July 1861, 4. ‘Important to Sugar Dealers’, New York Times, 6 July 1862, 6. ‘Sugar Tariffs and the Dutch Standard’, 61st Congress, first session, Senate Doc. 151 (1909).

¹⁷‘Tariff of 1861’, House Misdoc 43, 2 March 1861. Treasury Circular of 26 December 1861, in NARA, RG 56, entry 48, vol. 25. For the purchase of Dutch standards in the late 1870s, see NARA, RG 167, entry 36, box 1.

¹⁸Deerr (note 3), II, 573–577.

¹⁹‘The Trouble with Sugar’, New York Post, 17 December 1869, in Chandler papers, box 205, folder ‘Sugar Industry’, Butler Library, Columbia University.

²⁰J. Henry to F.A. Genth, with copy to J.P. Cooke, 3 March 1876, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Official Outgoing Correspondence, vol. 47, 483; and Henry to B.H. Bristow, 27 April 1876, vol. 49, 49.

²¹J. Henry to F.A. Genth, 13 February 1877, vol. 53, 409, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Official Outgoing Correspondence; Henry to J. Sherman, 23 April 1877, vol. 55, 195; and Henry to Sherman, 10 June 1877, vol. 57, 43.

²²John Sherman, Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate, and Cabinet (Chicago, 1895), although full of information, says nothing about sugar.

²³J. Sherman to F. Wood, 1 March 1877, cited in ‘Notes of a hearing given by the Committee of Ways & Means to the Representatives of the Sugar Trade and of the Treasury Department, Washington, DC Feb. 19, 1881’, NARA, RG 233, records of the US House of Representatives, Ways and Means Committee, 46th Congress, Folder H.R. 46A-F 36.8.

²⁴‘New Process of Sugar Manufacture’, Scientific American, 26 (1872), 69. United States. plaintiff, Testimony in the Case of the United States v. 712 Bags of Sugar Imported in the Mississippi. in the District Court of the United States for the District of Maryland (Washington, DC, 1878). ‘The Demerara Sugar Case’, Baltimore Evening Bulletin, 14 December 1878. ‘Colored Imported Sugars’, New York Times, 26 January 1878, 2, ‘Fraud Openly Charged’, 19 September 1878, 2, ‘Artificially-Colored Sugars’, 17 November 1878, 2, ‘Colored Demerara Sugars’, 21 Nov. 1878, 1. Demerara Dark Sugar and the United States Tariff (Georgetown, Guiana, 1877), in Chandler papers, box 208, Butler Library, Columbia University.

²⁵United States. Department of the Treasury. Special Agents Division, Report on the Methods of Manufacturing Sugars in West India Islands and British Guiana by S. E. Chamberlin, H. J. Abbott, and F. M. Endlich (Washington, DC, 1880). ‘Cultured Sugars’, [New York] Evening Post, 16 July 1880, Chandler Papers, box 206, Folder ‘Sugar, Adulteration, Frauds’, Butler Library, Columbia University.

²⁶‘Sugar and Secretary Sherman’, New York World, 7 Dec. 1879, in Chandler papers, box 207, Folder ‘Sugar, Adulteration, Frauds’, Butler Library, Columbia University.

²⁷‘The Tariff Bill Shelved Permanently’, New York Times, 6 June 1878, 1.

²⁸‘The Sugar Trade’, The Board of Trade Gazette, 20 April 1878, Chandler papers, box 206, folder ‘Sugar, Adulteration, Frauds’, Butler Library, Columbia University. The Gazette was correct with regard to the disagreements, but misread the situation when it reported that the ‘richest men in the business’ had ‘a holy horror of that “infernal machine” known to refiners and custom house officers as the “‘polariscope”.’ ‘Sugar Trade Troubles’, New York Times, 18 September 1878, 2.

²⁹ Congressional Record 47th Congress, first session, Senate (25 July 1882), p. 6450. ‘Getting Higher in Sugar Fraud’, New York Times, 13 November 1909, 1. For a discussion of the private docks, see ‘Freezing out Refiners’, New York Times, 23 February 1880, 2.

³⁰‘Progress of Revising the Tariff’, New York Times, 28 January1878, 1. ‘The Proposed New Tariff’, New York Times, 31 January 1878, 1. Report to secretary of the treasury John Sherman, 5 February 1878, in National Academy of Sciences Archives, files of the Committee on the use of polarized light for determining values of sugars. With the report is a letter of recommendation for Lugo, signed by Henry.

³¹Chandler to Cebollus & Co., 18 April 1878, in Chandler papers, box 203, folder Correspondence, Butler Library, Columbia University. This memo is quoted in David A. Wells, The Sugar Industry of the United States and the Tariff (New York, 1878), 102–104. ‘Miscellaneous City News’, New York Times, 13 April 1878, 8. ‘The New Tariff on Sugar’, New York Times, 19 April 1878, 2. ‘Investigating the Sugar Trade’, New York Times, 23 May 1878, 5. For a similar argument, see H.A. Brown, Sugar Frauds and the Tariff, Their Relations to Home Product, Consumption, Industry, Imports, Duties and Revenue, Analyzed and Exhibited. Duty & Drawback, Sampling & Grading. Adulterations and the Polariscope (Saxonville, MA, 1878). Brown, Condensed Summary of the Existing Condition of the Sugar Tariff Question, and the Equity of an Ad Valorem Sugar Tariff with Polariscope Tests Practically Est'd (Washington, DC, 1881).

³²‘Charles Frederick Chandler’, National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs 14 (1931), 125–181. Margaret Rossiter, ‘The Charles F. Chandler collection’, Technology and Culture 18 (1977), 222–230.

³³‘Charles F. Chandler’, New York Times, 6 August 1899, SM2; this was written on the occasion of Chandler's election as president of the Society of Chemical Industry. J.E. Boivan and D. Louieau, ‘Improved Process for Extracting, Manufacturing, and Refining Sugar’, US Patent 99141 (1870) assigned to Chandler. A. Seyforth, ‘Improvement in Treating Sugar with Sulpherous Acid in the Vacuum Pan’, US Patent 135,014 (1873). C.F. Chandler, ‘Sugar’, in Johnson's New Universal Cyclopaedia (New York, 1874–1878), 622–644. See also Chandler's petition to the 44th Congress, first session, H.R. report 572.

³⁴P. de P. Ricketts (Columbia, PhD), ‘A Method for the Detection of Artificial or Dextro-Glucose in Cane Sugar, and the Exact Determination of Cane Sugar by the Polariscope’, Journal of the American Chemical Society 1 (1879), 2–6. Marcus Benjamin (Columbia, BS), Sugar Analysis (New York, 1880). J. H. Tucker (Columbia, PhD), A Manual of Sugar Analysis (New York, 1881). Frederick G. Wiechmann (Columbia, PhD), Sugar Analysis (New York, 1890). Henry A. Mott, Jr. (Columbia, PhD), ‘The Practical Determination of the Value of the Sugars of Commerce’, Journal of the American Chemical Society 1 (1879), 514–522.

³⁵For Chandler's connections with the sugar refiners, see E. Hendrick, ‘Charles Frederick Chandler, his Life and Works’, Columbia Alumni News 17 (15 January 1926), 301–308; and C.F. Chandler to C.A. Browne, 7 December 1920, in Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Browne papers, box 4.

³⁶W.T. Booth to C.F. Chandler, 16 January 1878 and 11 April 1878, and Chandler to Cebollus & Co., 18 April 1878, in box 203, folder, ‘correspondence’, and H. Havemeyer to Chandler, 20 April 1878, in box 1, all in Chandler papers, Butler Library, Columbia University.

³⁷D.A. Wells The Sugar Industry of the United States and the Tariff (New York, 1878). L. C. Ware, The Sugar Beet (Philadelphia, 1880), 50.

³⁸W.S. Chance to O.H. Tittmann, n.d., NARA, RG 167, entry 36, box 6, items 569–571 and 576.

³⁹‘The Sugar Imbroglio’, [New York] Post, 10 Jan. 1879, in Chandler Papers, box 207, folder ‘Sugar, Adulteration, Frauds’, Butler Library, Columbia University. W. T. Booth to C. F. Chandler, 6 February 1879, box 203, folder ‘Correspondence.’

⁴⁰ Tariff on Sugar. Notes of a Hearing of Refiners, Importers, and Dealers in Sugar Before the Committee on Ways and Means, January 8, 9, and 10, 1879 (Washington, DC, 1879). “The Tariff on Sugar,” New York Times, 9 January 1879, 2.

⁴¹‘The doings of Congress’, New York Times, 13 Januray 1879, 1. ‘The Sugar Tariff’, Boston Globe, 14 January 1879, 1.

⁴² Congressional Record 45th Congress, third session (1879), 1959–1964, 2248–2256. See also The Sugar Tariff. Speeches of Members of the House of Representatives, Feb. 26–March 1 , 1879 (Washington, DC, 1879).

⁴³‘Duties on Sugar’, 46th Congress, second session, HR report 1399, 11 May 1880.

⁴⁴T.A. Havemeyer, Argument Before the Committee of Ways and Means on the Sugar Tariff. Against a Uniform Rate of Duty Up to No. 13, Dutch Standard, Jan. 31, 1880 (Washington, DC, 1880). US Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means, The Sugar Tariff. Notes of a Hearing. . .on the 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th and 31st of January, 1880 (Washington, DC, 1880).

⁴⁵‘Notes of a hearing given by the Committee of Ways & Means to the Representatives of the Sugar Trade and of the Treasury department, Washington, DC Feb. 19, 1881’, NARA, RG 233, Records of the US House of Representatives, Ways and Means Committee, 46 Congress, folder H.R. 46A-F 36.8.

⁴⁶US Treasury Department, Circular, 19 July 1879 and 2 September 1879. These appear also in the Transcript of record. Supreme Court of the United States, No. 1066. Edwin A. Meritt, collector of the port of New York, plaintiff in error, vs. Samuel Welsh, et al., filed 15 October 1881, 15–17.

⁴⁷Transcript of record. Supreme Court of the United States, No. 1066. Edwin A. Meritt, collector of the port of New York, plaintiff in error, vs. Samuel Welsh, et al., filed 15 October 1881. ‘Merritt v. Welsh’, US Reports, 104 (1881), 694–707. See also Gideon E. Moore, Statement Relative to the Artificial Coloring of Imported Sugars (Washington, DC, 1881); ‘The Sugar Tariff’, [New York] Post, 11 April 1881; ‘The Sugar Duty Question’, New York Times, 20 April 1881, 8; ‘Supreme Court Decisions’, New York Times, 7 March 1882, 2; and ‘Current Capital News’, Washington Post, 10 March 1882, 1, and editorial, 2.

⁴⁸‘Report of the Tariff Commission, Appointed under Act of Congress Approved May 15, 1882’, H. Misdoc 611, 47th Congress, second session, 21–22. ‘The Polariscope Test’, New York Times, 31 March 1882, 1. ‘Sugar Tariff Now in Effect’, New York Times, 1 June 1883, 8. Congressional Record, 47th Congress, first session, Senate, pp. 6449–6456.

⁴⁹National Academy of Sciences, Investigation of the Scientific and Economic Relations of the Sorghum Sugar Industry (Washington, DC, 1883), 26.

⁵⁰US Treasury Department, Circular 62 (1883). I have not seen the original, but the text appears as Exhibit A in American Sugar Refining Co. New York v. US, 211 U.S. 155 (1908), on 151–162.

⁵¹Franz Schmidt & Haensch, Anweisung zur richten Behandlung und zum Gebrauch des verbesserten Saccharimeters (n.p., n.d.). H. Landolt, Handbook of the Polariscope and Its Practical Applications (London, 1882), 155–174; this refers to Scheibler's article in Zeitschrift des Vereins für Rübenzuckfabrikation (1870), 609.

⁵²Bullock & Crenshaw, Catalogue of Chemical, Physical and Pharmaceutical Apparatus (Philadelphia, n.d.), 145; this is the nineteenth edition and probably dates from around 1890. Eimer & Amend, Prices Current (New York, 1895), 192–193. For polariscopes made in Scheibler's laboratory, see the undated price list of the Chemisches Laboratorium des Vereines für de Rükenzucker-Industrie im Zollverein, zu Berlin in Chandler papers, box 147, folder ‘Light & Optics, Notes & Clippings’, Butler Library, Columbia University.

⁵³[C.] Ventzke, Ueber die verschiedenen Zuckerarten und verwandte verbindungen, in Beziehung auf ihr optisches Verhalten und dessen praktische Anwedung,” Journal für praktische Chemie, 25 (1842), 65–84. J. H. Tucker, A Manual of Sugar Analysis (New York, 1881), 142–152. Review of L. Chevron, Analysis of Saccharine Substances. Theory of the Saccharometers of Soleil and Ventzke (Brussels, 1873), in The Sugar Cane, 5 (1873), 89–91. H. Landolt, ‘Analysis of Crude Sugars and Syrops’, The Sugar Cane, 5 (1873), 453–461, mentions a Ventzke-Soleil saccharimeter made by F. Schmidt of Berlin.

⁵⁴‘Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, Transmitting, in Response to Senate Resolution of January 8, 1889, Information Relative to the Sugar Frauds’, 50th Congress, second session, 1889, S. ex. doc. 77. ‘Letter of the Secretary of the Treasury Relative to the Undervaluations and Frauds in the Collection of the Revenues’, 50th Congress, second session, 1889, S. ex. doc. 142.

⁵⁵‘Letter of the Secretary of the Treasury Relative to the Undervaluations and Frauds in the Collection of the Revenues’, 50th Congress, second session, 1889, S. ex. doc. 142, 50–54.

⁵⁶A.S. Wright, E.S. Dana and C.S. Hastings, ‘Report on Sugar Determination’, Report of the National Academy of Sciences for the Year 1887, appendix E. See also ‘The National Academy of Sciences’, Science, 11 (1888), 195.

⁵⁷‘The Administration and the Custom-House’, The Nation (31 May 1888), 440–441; notice, The Nation (5 July 1888), 3; and notice, The Nation, (26 Sept. 1889), 242–243. ‘Sugar Frauds Alleged’, New York Times, 26 February 1889, 2. ‘Again in Office’, New York Times, 22 September 1889, 16.

⁵⁸‘Chemist Sherer Exonerated’, New York Times, 26 June 1890, 4. ‘The Sugar Test Troubles’, New York Times, 28 June 1890, 4. ‘Sherer's Tests Condemned’, New York Times, 25 June 1890, 8.

⁵⁹The law, 26 Stat., 567, is quoted in Report of the Secretary of Agriculture (1891), 161–163.

⁶⁰J. Mason to T.C. Mendenhall, 4 March 1891, NARA, RG 167, entry 36, box 6, items 582–585. H.W. Wiley to Mason, 6 March 1891, NARA, RG 97, entry 5, box 8, vol. 32, items 59–62.

⁶¹H.W. Wiley, ‘The Effect of Heating with Dilute Acids and Treating with Animal Charcoal, on the Rotary Power of Glucose; with Notes on the Estimation of Cane Sugar and Glucose in Mixture’, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2 (1880), 395–402. Wiley, “The Rotary Power of Commercial Glucose,” Science, 2 (1881), 53–54. Wiley, ‘the Rotary Power of Commercial Glucose and Grape Sugar. a Method of Determining the Amount of Reducing Substance Present, by the Polariscope’, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2 (1880), 387–395; reprinted in Science, 2 (1881), 393–395.

⁶²‘Letter from the Acting Secretary of the Treasury, in Response to a Resolution of September 22, 1890, Relative to Differences in Test and Classification of Sugars at the Ports of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia’, 51st Congress, first session, S. ex. doc. 229.

⁶³C. Andrews to C.S. Fairchild, 18 October 1888, and set of instructions with the same date, NARA, RG 97, entry 3, box 103. H.W. Wiley to W.S. Chance, 18 June 1890, NARA, RG 97, entry 5, box 7.

⁶⁴US Internal Revenue Service, Instructions and Regulations Concerning the Testing of Sugar by the Polariscope (Washington, DC, 1891). Eimer & Amend, Prices Current (New York, 1895), 392–393.

⁶⁵US Department of the Treasury, Revised Regulations Governing the Sampling and Classification of Imported Sugars and Molasses under the Act of July 24, 1897 (Washington, DC, 1899). H.W. Wiley to W.S. Chance, 7 November 1898, NARA, RG 97, entry 5, box 20, vol. 72, items 458–460.

⁶⁶‘Sugar importers lose’, New York Times, 14 March 1899, 5. For Wiley's argument, see H.W. Wiley, History of a Crime Against the Food Laws (Washington, DC, 1929), chapter ‘The Bureau of Standards.’

⁶⁷‘Many Customs Cases’, New York Times, 25 October 1903, 23. ‘Sugar Test Case Reversed’, New York Times, 5 May 1903, 16. ‘Bartram Bros. v. United States. Benjamin H. Howell, Son & Co. v. same. American Sugar Refining Co. v. same’, The Federal Reporter, 123 (1903), 327 (Circuit Court); and The Federal Register, 131 (1904), 833–837 (Circuit Court of Appeals). See also ‘Government Wins Sugar Case’, Washington Post, 3 June 1904, 1.16. ‘U.S.A. Polariscope Case Decided’, International Sugar Journal, 6 (1904), 311. ‘Government Saves $2,000,000’, New York Times, 8 December 1904, 10.

⁶⁸‘Sugar Test Decision’, Washington Post, 1 January 1905, S1. ‘Lawyers Got the Money’, New York Times, 20 August 1905, WQS8.

⁶⁹Transcript of record. Supreme Court of the United States. American Sugar Refining Co. New York v. U.S. 211 U.S. 155 (filed May 2, 1906). ‘Importers of Sugar Institute 65 Suits’, New York Times, 29 January 1905, 18. ‘Suits to Recover Duties’, Washington Post, 29 January 1905, 5. ‘New Test by Sugar Trust’, New York Times, 16 November 1908, 5. ‘Latest Customs Rulings’, New York Times, 27 December 1908, C8.

⁷⁰H.W. Wiley to W.S. Chance, 18 March 1898, NARA, RG 97, entry 5, box 20, vol. 69.

⁷¹F.G. Wiechmann, review of G.W. Rolfe, The Polariscope in the Chemical Laboratory, in Science, 23 (1906), 627–628. H.S. Pritchett to H.W. Wiley, 15 March 1900, sending 12 copies of the conversion tables, NARA, RG 97, entry 3, box 104.

⁷²F.G. Wiechmann, ‘The Question of Temperature-Influence on the Specific Rotation of Sucrose’, International Sugar Journal, 2 (1900), 491–501, 564–579, on 571. Wiechmann review of R. Frühling, Anleitung zur Untersuchung der für die Zuckerindustrie (1903) in Science, 17 (1903), 937–938. R.W. Plews, ed., The History of ICUMSA. the First 100 Years, 1897–1997 (Berlin, 1997).

⁷³H.W. Wiley to T. C. Mendenhall, 5 September 1889, NARA, RG 167, entry 7, box 4, item 496.

⁷⁴C.W. Andrews, ‘The Influence of Temperature on the Specific Rotation of Cane Sugar’, Technology Quarterly, 2 (1889), 367–371, and ‘Notes on the Determination of Sugar by the Polariscope’, 372–378.

⁷⁵H.W. Wiley, ‘The Influence of Temperature on the Specific Rotation of Sucrose and Method of Correcting Readings of Compensating Polariscopes Therefor’, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 21 (1899), 568–596, excerpted in G. Stade, ‘Modern Polariscopes’, International Sugar Journal, 1 (1899), 65–72. Wiley read this paper at the International Congress for Applied Chemistry held in Vienna in 1898.

⁷⁶ Hearing Before the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures … May 3, 1900, re H.R. 11350 (Washington, DC, 1900), 5. E.B. Rosa, ‘The National Bureau of Standards and Its Relation to Scientific and Technical Laboratories’, Science, 21 (1905), 161–173, noted that the Bureau was embroiled in the controversy ‘between the experts of the government and those employed by the sugar interests as to the effect of temperature upon the indications of the polariscope’.

⁷⁷National Bureau of Standards, Verification of Polariscopic Apparatus (16 July 1906), Circular C12.

⁷⁸David Cahan and M.E. Rudd, Science at the Frontier: a Biography of DeWitt Bristol Brace (Lincoln, NE, 2000).

⁷⁹US Treasury. Division of Customs, Regulations Governing the Weighing, Taring, Sampling, Classification and Polarization of Imported Sugars and Molasses (Washington, DC, 1907). Report of the Director of the Bureau of Standards in Annual Report of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor (1904), 905.

⁸⁰R.C. Cochrane, Measures for Progress. a History of the National Bureau of Standards (Washington, DC, 1966), 151–152. H.W. Wiley to W.S. Chance, 4 March 1898, NARA, RG 97, entry 5, box 6, and 6 March 1898, in box 7. C.H. Keep, Assistant Secretary, to the Collector of Customs at New Orleans, 9 July 1903, NARA, RG 97, entry 3, box 102. This refers to Customs Regulations #1340 and #1409 of 1899

⁸¹Several of these polariscopes, acquired undoubtedly at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition held in St. Louis in 1904, are now in the Physical Sciences collections of the National Museum of American History.

⁸²Frederick J. Bates, ‘A Quartz Compensated Polariscope of Adjustable Sensibility’, International Sugar Journal, 9 (1907), 588–593; also published in National Bureau of Standards, Bulletin, 4 (1908). Bates, ‘Remarks on the Quartz Compensating Polariscope with Adjustable Sensibility’, National Bureau of Standards, Bulletin 5 (1908). Josef J. Fric, ‘Optical instrument’, US Patent 844012 (1907). E.H. Sargent & Co., List no. 20 (Chicago, n.d.), p. 236. Report of the Director of the Bureau of Standards in Annual Report of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor (1904), 905, (1905), 649, (1907), 666–667, (1908), 686, (1909), 770–771, and (1911), 462.

⁸³C.A. Browne to the Directors of the New York Sugar Trade Laboratory, 17 September 1919, Browne papers, box 11, Library of Congress. Browne to H.C. Prinsen Geerligs, 26 November 1919, in box. 5. Browne, ‘A History of the New York Sugar Trade Laboratory’, Browne papers, in Box 33. David Singerman, ‘Sugar, Tariffs, and the Bureau of Standards’, ms. Information Services Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology.

⁸⁴B.W. Higman, ‘The Sugar Revolution’, Economic History Review, 53 (2000): 213–236. E.O. von Lippmann, Geschichte des Zuckers seit den ältesten zeiten bis zum beginn der rübenzucker-fabrikation (Berlin, 1929). Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar (London, 1949–1950). Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: the Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, 1985); this focuses on sugar consumption in Britain but much of the argument pertains as well to the US experience. J.H. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry: an Historical Geography from Its Origins to 1914 (Cambridge, 1989). Manuel Moreno Fraginals, The Sugar Mill. The Socioeconomic Complex of Sugar in Cuba, 1760–1860, English trans. by C. Belfrage (New York, 1976).

⁸⁵But see, for instance, Raymond P. Stearns, ‘The Production of Sugar in Barbados c. 1667’, Annals of Science, 1 (1936), 173–181, which concerns an early response to the Royal Society's appeal for information on the natural history and products of Barbados.

⁸⁶For an overview, see Robert Multhauf, ‘European Science Museums’, Science, 128 (1958), 512–518.

⁸⁷Leopold Ambronn, Handbuch der astronomischen Instrumentenkunde (Berlin, 1899). Johann A. Repsold, Zur Geschichte der astronomischen Messwerkzeuge (Leipzig, 1908–1914). Reginald S. Clay and Thomas H. Court, The History of the Microscope (London, 1932). Henry C. King, The History of the Telescope (London, 1955).

⁸⁸Maurice Daumas, Les instruments scientifique aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1953). E.G.R. Taylor, The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor & Stuart England (Cambridge, 1954). Ernst Zinner, Deutsche und niederländische astronomische Instrumente des 11.–18. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1956). Silvio A. Bedini, Early American Scientific Instruments and Their Makers (Washington, DC, 1964).

⁸⁹Derek Price, ‘Scientific Apparatus. Unwritten Documents of the History of Science’, Science, 125 (1957), 750; ‘Automata and the Origins of Mechanism and Mechanistic Philosophy’, Technology and Culture, 5 (1964), 9–23; ‘Philosophical Mechanism and Mechanical Philosophy. Some Notes Toward a Philosophy of Scientific Instruments’, Annali dell'istituto e museo di storia della science di Firenze, 6 (1980), 75–85.

⁹⁰Bernard Finn, ‘Robert P. Multhauf, 1919–2004’, Technology & Culture, 46 (2005), 265–273. Pamela Henson, ‘“Object of Curious Research’: the History of Science and Technology at the Smithsonian’, Isis, 90 (1999), S249-S269.

⁹¹Derek Price, ‘Of Sealing Wax and String’, Natural History, 93 (1984), 49–56.

⁹²Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life (Princeton, NJ, 1987). Bruce J. Hunt, ‘The Ohm Is Where the Art Is: British Telegraph Engineers and the Development of Electrical Standards’, Osiris, 9 (1994), 48–63. Harry Collins, Gravity's Shadow. the Search for Gravitational Waves (Chicago, 2004). R. Bud and D.J. Warner, eds., Instruments of Science. An Historical Encyclopedia (New York, 1998).

⁹³I thank Philip Scranton for this insight. William J. Ashworth, “‘Between the trader and the public’: British alcohol standards and the proof of good governance,” Technology and culture, 42 (2001), 27–50, is a notable exception, as is James Sumner, ‘John Richardson, saccharometry and the pounds-per-barrel extract: the construction of a quantity’, British journal for the history of science, 34 (2001), 255–273.

⁹⁴L. Landolt, Handbook of the Polariscope and Its Practical Applications (London, 1882). J.H. Tucker, a Manual of Sugar Analysis (New York, 1894). D. Sidarsky, Polarisation et saccharimetrie (Paris, 1895). G.W. Rolfe, The Polariscope in the Chemical Laboratory (New York, 1905). C.A. Browne and F.W. Zerban, Physical and Chemical Methods of Sugar Analysis (New York, 1941).

⁹⁵Robert Ward, The Development of the Polarimeter in Relation to Problems in Pure and Applied Chemistry: an Aspect of Nineteenth Century Scientific Instrumentation (PhD dissertation, London University, 1980).

⁹⁶Paul Lucier, ‘Commercial Interests and Scientific Disinterestedness. Consulting Geologists in Antebellum America’, Isis, 86 (1995), 245–267.

⁹⁷Christoper Hamlin, ‘Scientific Method and Expert Witnessing: Victorian Perspectives on a Modern Problem’, Social Studies of Science, 16 (1986), 485–513. For the US, see for instance, ‘The Evils of Expertism’, Manufacturer and Builder, 12 (1880), 219.

⁹⁸M. Norton Wise, ed., The Values of Precision (Princeton, NJ, 1995). Theodore M. Porter, Trust in Numbers: the Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton, NJ, 1995).

⁹⁹R.C. Cochrane, Measures for Progress: a History of the National Bureau of Standards (Washington, DC, 1966). David Cahan, an Institute for an Empire: the Physikalish-Technische Reichsanstalt, 1871–1918 (Cambridge, 1989), esp. pp. 165–166. P.W. Hammond and H. Egan, Weighed in the Balance. a History of the Laboratory of the Government Chemist (London, 1992).

¹⁰⁰See, for instance, Graeme Gooday, The Morals of Measurement (Cambridge, 2004).

¹⁰¹But see, for example, Patricia P. Gossel, ‘A Need for Standard Methods: the Case of American Bacteriology’, pp. 287–311 in Adele E. Clarke and Joan H. Fujimuru, eds., The Right Tools for the Job: at Work in Twentieth-Century Life Sciences (Princeton, NJ, 1992).