For nearly a century, saccharin has been widely used as a food seasoning to supplement the lack of sugar. There is an interesting story about the invention of saccharin.
Russian Farid Berg is a chemist who is engaged in research at the University of Baltimore in the United States. One year, on his birthday, the couple decided to invite some friends over for dinner. During the day, he still had to do his experiments. The wife repeatedly reminded her husband to go home early. He promised to be back at 5 o'clock and went to the laboratory happily.
Twilight fell on the earth, and the laboratory gradually became dark. Faridberg is a person who forgets everything when he starts an experiment. He has already forgotten all about the dinner party, so he lights a candle and continues to work. An experiment came to light. He happily took out the pencil in his pocket and wrote down the results in the experiment record book. When he put the pencil in his pocket, he caught sight of the big clock hanging on the wall.
"Oops, no good! It's already 8 o'clock..." He suddenly remembered the date, washed his hands quickly, put on his coat and hurried home.
"I'm sorry for keeping you waiting for so long!" He apologized after entering the house and chatted with the guests. When talking about the experiment he was currently doing, he took out the pencil he brought back from the laboratory from his shirt pocket and wrote the words "aromatic sulfonic acid compounds" on the newspaper.
My wife had cooked the meal, and he was busy setting out wine glasses, tableware, and serving plates of dishes. The dinner was held in a cheerful atmosphere. Suddenly a friend said: "What a sweet crispy chicken!" Another added: "My sister-in-law actually fried sweet steak!"
After seeing off the guests, the couple thought about this strange thing sweet chicken nuggets and sweet steak. "I didn't add sugar, what's going on?" said the wife. Faridberg began to examine each piece one by one, licking the tableware used by the guests, the large plates for serving dishes, and even his own hands. After thinking about it, he also licked the pencil in his pocket with his tongue. After a moment, he shouted like crazy: "The problem is with the pencil! It's with the pencil!"
It turned out that after checking the tableware, he found that the sweet taste came from his fingers. , everything he touched with his hands was sweet. But when I washed my hands before going home, how could they be stained with sweet taste? One by one, he thought about the things he had touched with his hands, and finally thought of the pencil he had written on with his right hand.
The pencil revealed to him the secret of the source of the sweetness. It is certain that the sweetness on the pencil was stained in the laboratory. This serendipitous discovery opened up a path to new inventions for Faridberg.
Early the next morning, he couldn't wait to come to the laboratory and inspect the utensils used in the experiment one by one. His heart was filled with happiness and joy. From then on, he concentrated all his energy on studying this sweet substance extracted from coal tar - saccharin.
Saccharin is not particularly toxic to human health. It can cause people to feel sweet in taste and has no nutritional value to the human body, so it can only be used as a sweetener and cannot replace sugar.
Later, he also determined that saccharin is 500 times sweeter than ordinary sugar. In 1879, Faridberg announced the invention of saccharin and obtained the patent right for the invention of saccharin in the United States. Seven years later, he came to live in Germany from the United States and built the world's first saccharin factory with his own hands. From then on, he began to produce saccharin in large quantities.