Soda pop (also known as soda and pop) is a soft drink made from carbonated water and syrup. The water is carbonated by the addition of carbon dioxide gas. The syrup consists of sweeteners and a concentrate that is a mixture of flavoring and acid; sometimes coloring is also added. Typically, a soda pop company manufactures the syrup or concentrate and then sells it to a franchised bottler, who adds carbonated water (plus sweetener, if just concentrate is being used) and then bottles and sells the finished drink. Soda pop got its name from the term "soda water," used for carbonated water, and from the popping sound made by the cork stoppers when pulled out of the bottles.
Soda pop made its first appearance in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the 1830s, but it did not become widely popular until the last quarter of the century. Most soda pops were at first mixed and sold at drugstore counters, called soda fountains, as healthful tonics. Individual pharmacists developed and sold their own special syrups, dispensing a dollop of syrup and then filling the rest of the glass with carbonated water from the taps at the fountain.
When bottled soda pop grew in popularity during the 1890s, national brands began to appear. The world's most popular soda pop, Coca-Cola, was the invention of Dr. John Stith Pemberton (1850-1888), an Atlanta, Georgia, druggist, who experimented with various ingredients until he came up with his distinctive and stimulating thirst-quencher in 1886. Pemberton's bookkeeper, Frank Robinson, devised its name from two of the drink's ingredients, the coca leaf and cola nut, and designed its trademark flowing script used to spell the product's name. First-year sales totaled 25 gallons.
Pemberton died in 1888, and another Atlanta druggist, Asa G. Candler, became the sole owner of Coca-Cola in 1891. Candler aggressively marketed his product, and granted the first bottling rights to Joseph Biedenharn of Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1894. Benjamin Thomas and Joseph Whitehead of Chattanooga, Tennessee, also secured bottling rights, in 1899. The famous trademarked bottle, inspired by the shape of the cola nut, appeared in 1916, designed by Alex Samuelson of the Root Glass Company in Terre Haute, Indiana. The Coca-Cola Company at first opposed the public's spontaneous use of the nickname Coke for its product, but eventually yielded to the inevitable and trademarked that name as well.
Other familiar soda pops also trace their origins back to the 1880s and l890s. Root beer became the first nationally popular soda pop when Charles F. Hires (1851-1937) exhibited his mixture of dried roots, barks, and herbs at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. Originally designed to be brewed into a drink at home, Hires Root Beer became available in bottles around 1893.
The second-oldest soda pop was concocted by a love-struck soda jerk in Virginia around 1880. Fired by the pharmacist for whom he worked because he was in love with the druggist's daughter, this anonymous young man moved to Waco, Texas, where he began dispensing his drink at the Old Corner Drug Store. Patrons of the soda fountain dubbed the invention Dr. Pepper, after the Virginia druggist. A Waco bottler, R. S. Lazenby, perfected the drink's formula and began marketing it in bottled form in 1885. Dr. Pepper remained a regional specialty until the 1920s; today, Dr. Pepper is one of the largest American soda manufacturers.
Coca-Cola's major rival, Pepsi-Cola, is the invention of pharmacist Caleb D. Bradham of New Bern, North Carolina. While local customers called the soda "Brad's Drink," the inventor chose the name Pepsi-Cola in 1898. Pepsi almost disappeared in 1920, when Bradham bought up vast quantities of sugar at 22 cents a pound but was wiped out when sugar prices fell precipitately to 3 cents a pound. Pepsi bounced back in 1933 during the Depression, when the company doubled the size of its bottle but kept the price at five cents.
Moxie, once one of the most popular sodas in the United States, began as a concentrated medicinal tonic marketed by the Moxie Nerve Food Company of Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1885; it was soon sold in bottled, carbonated form. Ginger ale was bottled in the 1880s but became popular only after pharmacist and chemist John J. McLaughlin of Toronto, Ontario, improved the old-style product in 1904 by making it pale and less gingery. Canada Dry Pale Dry Ginger Ale rapidly became popular in Canada, and then in the United States beginning in 1919. Orange Crush, one of the first orange soda pops, was introduced in 1916 in Chicago, Illinois.
St. Louis, Missouri, was the birthplace of 7-Up, developed in 1929 by bottler C. L. Grigg who, with his partner E. G. Ridgway, had been selling an orange soda called Howdy since 1920. When citrus growers successfully lobbied for legislation requiring orange soda to contain real orange flavoring, Grigg concocted a new lemon-lime mix. Its unwieldy name, Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda, was soon changed to 7-Up, inspired by its seven-ounce container. 7-Up rapidly came to dominate the 600-odd other lemon-lime sodas on the market.
Today average per capita consumption of soda pop in the United States is 49 gallons per year. In fact, according to the National Soft Drink Association, one out of every four beverages consumed by Americans, from water to wine, is a soft drink. There are now about 450 soft drinks on the market in the United States, and the beverages are consumed in over 195 countries. The most popular flavor is cola, followed by, in order of preference, lemon-lime, orange, ginger ale, root beer, and grape. Diet sodas first appeared on the market around 1960. Two artificial sweeteners, aspartame and saccharin, have been approved for use in U.S. diet sodas, and other sweeteners are now under development.
This is the complete article, containing 947 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
