National Museum of American History
Dutch Color Standards
1882
The Dutch Standard, designed to determine where a sugar sample stood on the continuum from raw to refined, was a set of glass jars filled with different sugars. Each jar was numbered, and the lower the number, the rawer the sugar. Because the color of the sugars tended to fade when exposed to light, a new set was released every two years. The Dutch Standard was written into U.S. law in 1861 when the Congress passed "An Act to Increase the Duties on Tea, Coffee, and Sugar."
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