Soda Water
European scientists became interested in the natural effervescence of mineral waters in the sixteenth century. Mineral-water springs were very popular at the time because of their supposed therapeutic properties. Chemists and scientists studied the nature of the bubbles in the water and considered ways to reproduce them artificially.
The Irish scientist Robert Boyle wrote about mineral waters and the possibility of imitating them chemically in 1685. Jan Baptista van Helmont (1579-1644) was the first to use the word gas to describe the vapor in the bubbles (which was carbon dioxide), in the early part of the seventeenth century. Joseph Black (1728-1799) used the term fixed air. Many investigations of the chemistry of mineral waters were reported in the bulletin of the Royal Society of London during the 1700s. American scientists who became interested in mineral waters beginning in the 1770s included Dr. Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.
An English chemist named Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) discovered a way to introduce carbon dioxide into still water in 1772. Priestley, a failed preacher, lived next door to a brewery, which produced abundant supplies of "fixed air" in layers above the vats of fermenting beer. Experimenting with the gas, Priestley found that if he introduced it into plain water, the water absorbed some of it and became fizzy. He discovered that this new mixture had a pleasant taste, and began to market it. Since the addition of flavoring and sugar to Priestley's soda water would later create soda pop, Priestley is acknowledged as the "father of the soft drink industry."
Priestley demonstrated a small carbonating apparatus in 1772. Both he and Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), a French chemist, suggested using a pump to increase carbonation. The term "soda water" was soon applied to carbonated water because sodium carbonate was used in manufacturing it. A druggist named Thomas Henry (1734-1816) first produced soda water commercially in Manchester, England. A Swiss jeweler, Jacob Schweppe, also adapted Priestley and Lavoisier's ideas and was selling a highly carbonated soda water in Geneva, Switzerland, by 1794. He later expanded his business to London. In the United States, scientist Benjamin Silliman founded the first soda water manufacturing facility in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1807. The first American patent for making artificial mineral water was granted to Joseph Hawkins of Philadelphia in 1809.
Mineral salts and flavors were soon added to soda waters, and by 1865, fifteen soda-water flavors were advertised. As more flavorings (plus sweeteners) were added, soda water evolved into soda pop. In 185O, 64 plants were making bottled soda water in the United States; in 1870 the number had climbed to 387, and it reached an all time high of 8,220 plants before the stock market crash of 1929.
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