Saccharin: A Taste of BetrayalHow bad hygiene and a broken friendship created a new food.

From the show

The Secret Life of Objects

The discovery of the first artificial sweetener was a complete accident. In 1879, a chemist named Constantin Fahlberg noticed his dinner roll was intensely sweet because he hadn't washed his hands after work. He traced the sweetness back to a compound in his lab, a coal tar derivative. While Fahlberg and his boss, Ira Remsen, co-published the finding, Fahlberg secretly patented it for himself. This act of betrayal sparked a lifelong feud over the credit for a discovery that forever changed what we eat.