Who Invented Soft Drinks?

Coca Cola. Pepsi Cola. 7-Up. Sprite. Orange Crush. Mountain Dew. Fanta. Irn-Bru. Fresca. Whether they are called pop, soda, soft drinks, or something else entirely, these sugary, fizzy drinks are absolutely everywhere, ranking fifth among the world’s most popular beverages after water, tea, fruit juice, and coffee. In the United States alone, some 45 billion litres of soda are consumed every year – around 144 litres per person – every year – much to the consternation of dentists and diabetes researchers everywhere. But where did these drinks come from in the first place? How did they come to dominate the global market, and why do we love the taste of fizzy drinks so much, anyway? Well relax and crack open up a cold one as we dive into the fascinating history of soft drinks.

In a sense, humans have been consuming fizzy drinks for hundreds if not thousands of years. After all, beer – the earliest recipe for which dates from 4,000 years ago – is naturally effervescent due to carbon dioxide produced by the fermentation process; while in the 17th and 18th centuries French and British vintners discovered how to make sparkling wine by adding extra sugar to the bottle and initiating a second round of fermentation. And in certain parts of the world, rare geological conditions conspire to produce springs of naturally sparkling mineral water. Famous examples include the Eifel region of Germany, the Prekmurje region of Slovenia, and Cambuquira in Brazil. These waters were long believed to have health-giving properties, and tourists flocked to towns like Niederselters in Germany to bathe in the springs or consume bottles of so-called selterswasser. Indeed, this name was later corrupted to seltzer by Yiddish-speaking immigrants to America, giving us one of many modern terms for sparkling water.

However, it was not until the 1770s that someone figured out how to artificially reproduce natural seltzer water. That someone was Joseph Priestley, an English Presbyterian minister, political theorist, and scientific polymath who is credited with – among other things – founding Unitarianism in England, writing seminal books on enlightenment philosophy and English grammar, and discovering multiple chemical substances including nitrous oxide, ammonia, and oxygen (though the latter discovery is now typically attributed to Swedish chemist Karl Wilhelm Scheele).

In 1767, Priestley was living in Leeds, in a house that stood near the local brewery. He soon became fascinated by the “airs” or gases given off by the fermentation vats, and after some experimentation determined that these gases were identical to what Scottish physician Joseph Black had previously described as “fixed air”. So-named because it could be “fixed” in various materials such as calcium carbonate – AKA limestone – we now know it better as carbon dioxide. Realizing that this was also the same gas which gave naturally sparkling spring water its effervescence, Priestly wondered if such water could be artificially reproduced. His first method involved suspending a vessel of water above a fermentation vat so the carbon dioxide would naturally dissolve into the water. However, this method was inefficient and difficult to scale, so Priestley developed a new process wherein he combined sulphuric acid with limestone to generate carbon dioxide, which was then bubbled through water, using a pig’s bladder as a storage vessel and flow regulator. In 1772, Priestly published his findings in a paper entitled Impregnating Water With Fixed Air, for which he was awarded the prestigious Copley Medal by the The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.

For Priestley, however, carbonated water was little more than a scientific curiosity, and he never sought to commercialize his invention. He did, however, supply his carbonation method to Captain James Cook for his second voyage to the Pacific, in the hopes that it would help alleviate the dreaded maritime disease of scurvy. But as we now know that scurvy is caused by a vitamin C deficiency, this ‘cure’ was – unsurprisingly – unsuccessful. However, carbonated water was found to keep longer and taste better on long sea voyages than ordinary water – likely due to the formation of carbonic acid, which is a mild antiseptic.

Given the considerable demand for natural mineral water, it was not long before others stepped forward to turn artificial sparkling water into an equally lucrative industry. Several inventors including John Mervin Nooth in England and Tobern Bergman in Sweden invented devices for mass-producing carbonated water,

while the world’s first large-scale water carbonation plant was built in 1781 in Manchester by English apothecary Thomas Henry. His product, with the delightful name of “Bewley’s Mephitic Julep,” was sold as a health tonic. In 1783 and 1792, German-Swiss watchmaker Johann Jacob Schweppe established commercial carbonation plants in Geneva and London employing an improved carbon dioxide generation process which replaced Priestley’s sulphuric acid and limestone combination with a cheaper – and safer – mixture of tartaric acid and sodium bicarbonate. Artificially sparkling or soda water soon became a favourite beverage among the upper classes – including King William IV of the United Kingdom. In 1831 the King granted the Schweppes Company a Royal warrant of appointment, causing their products to explode in popularity. Sadly, Jacob Schweppe did not live to see this success, having died ten years before. And if his name sounds familiar, it’s because the company Schweppe founded is still around today, and produces a variety of sparkling drinks including tonic water, club soda, bitter lemon, and – most famously – ginger ale.

At this point in the video, it is probably worth clearing up some terminology. Mineral water typically refers to water – whether carbonated or not – sourced from natural springs, and is no-named because it typically contains a variety of dissolved minerals such as sodium or potassium chloride, citrate, bicarbonate, or sulphate. Early producers of carbonated water deliberately added these minerals in order to mimic the flavour profile of natural mineral water and balance the acidity of the dissolved carbon dioxide. Since at the time Sodium salts were collectively called soda, artificial mineral water became generally known as soda water. Today, such minerals – particularly sodium bicarbonate or baking soda – are typically only added to club soda, while artificially carbonated water lacking added minerals is typically known as sparkling water or seltzer. So now you know!

Initially, soda water was drunk straight as a treatment for all sorts of ailments, from digestive and nervous complaints to impotence and – as we’ve seen – scurvy. However, it was not long before people started mixing it with alcohol, fruit juices and syrups, and other additives. Indeed, in the early 19th century, British colonists in India and southern Africa began mixing carbonated water with quinine – derived from the bark of the South American Cinchona Tree – to ward off malaria. However, the quinine was so bitter that they soon began adding sugar and later gin to mask the taste – creating, at a stroke, tonic water and the gin-and-tonic, one of the oldest mixed drinks still regularly consumed. Other early soda flavourings include ginger – first recorded in 1809 – birch bark, and sarsaparilla root – AKA root beer. Such “soft” drinks were heavily promoted by the burgeoning Temperance Movement as a morally superior alternative to “hard” or alcoholic beverages.

On this note, technically soft drinks aren’t just flavored carbonated beverages. “Soft Drink” refers to nearly all beverages that do not contain significant amounts of alcohol.

The term “soft drink” though is now typically used exclusively for flavored carbonated beverages owing to advertising. Flavored carbonated beverage makers were having a hard time creating national advertisements due to the fact that what you call their product varies from place to place. For instance, in parts of the United States and Canada, flavored carbonated beverages are referred to as “pop”; in other parts “soda”; in yet other parts “coke”; and there are a variety of other names commonly used as well. Then if we go international with the advertisements, in England these drinks are called “fizzy drinks”; in Ireland sometimes “minerals”. To account for the fact that they can’t refer to their product in the generic sense on national advertisements, because of these varied terms, these manufactures began pushing the “soft drink” moniker and it has more or less stuck ever since.

In any event, due to their origins as health tonics, early soft drinks were mainly sold in pharmacies, where the pharmacist would mix unflavoured soda water with various flavoured syrups to create the final product. At first, pharmacists created their own syrups, but soon commercially-manufactured flavourings became available, starting with a lemonade concentrate introduced by Richard White in 1845. Still sold to this day, R. White’s lemonade is considered the oldest continuously-produced soft drink in the world. White, along with rival soda manufacturers like Schweppes, would soon expand their product line to include flavours like raspberry, strawberry, cherry, pineapple, orange, ginger, and vanilla – AKA Cream Soda. By the time of the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, visitors could sample dozens of flavours from refreshment carts for just pennies a glass.

But as the soda industry continued to expand, bottlers faced a serious problem: how to stop soda water from going flat between the factory and the pharmacy or drinks cart. Traditional corked bottles used to hold wine and beer were too inconvenient for the average consumer to open, requiring the use of a corkscrew. Storing them upright also resulted in the cork drying out, causing it to pop or leak and the soda to lose carbonation. A solution was eventually found in the form of the Codd-neck bottle, invented in 1872 by London-based soft drink maker Hiram Cobb. In Cobb’s design, a glass marble sealed against a rubber washer in the neck of the bottle, held in place by the gas pressure below. To open the bottle, the drinker simply pushed the marble down into a larger chamber moulded into the bottleneck, breaking the seal and releasing the pressure. These bottles remained popular until 1892, when Baltimore engineer William Painter invented the cheaper -and now ubiquitous – crown cork or crown cap that could be crimped onto the bottleneck and removed with a simple bottle opener. However, Codd-neck bottles never fully went away, and are still used for the Japanese soft drink Ramune and the Indian soft drink Banta.

Yet despite these advancements there was still another problem: often the pharmacist or drinks cart vendor did not use the entire bottle of soda water at once, and the remainder quickly went flat. One solution was the Plinth Portable Fountain, created in 1813 by English inventor Charles Plinth. This consisted of a spigot valve that could be attached to the neck of an open soda bottle, allowing the contents to be intermittently dispensed without the remainder losing its carbonation. Another, more popular solution was to generate carbonated water on the spot rather than buy it pre-packaged from a bottler. Indeed, Charles Plinth also invented a mobile carbonation cart which allowed him to deliver freshly-carbonated water to bars all around London. This further drove the rising popularity of soda water and led to the creation another of the oldest mixed drinks still commonly served: a mixture of soda water, gin, sugar, and lemon juice known as the Tom Collins.

Then, in 1829, French inventor Victor Durafort invented a portable soda generator and dispenser he called the seltzogene. This consisted of a thick, pressure-resistant glass bottle with two dip tubes descending from the cap: one to pressurize the bottle with carbon dioxide, and the other to dispense the resulting carbonated water. Early seltzogenes – also known as gazogenes – featured twin compartments at the top which the user filled with tartaric acid, sodium bicarbonate, and water to generate the carbon dioxide – and indeed, one such devices features in several of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, being a prominent fixture of the great detective’s apartment at 221B Baker Street. Later variants, however, had to be recharged at a bottling plant, and many manufacturers offered milk delivery-like services where empty bottles were picked up and returned fully-pressurized. Then, in 1889, Kenneth Murray of Aerators Ltd. in Crayford, Kent, invented the sparklet, a miniature carbon dioxide cylinder that could be inserted into a seltzogene in order to pressurize it. By this time, however, such devices were typically known as soda siphons, and you’ve probably seen them in dozens of slapstick comedies from the 1930s and 40s being used to soak some hapless victim. And to learn more about these iconic devices and how they work, please check out the author’s video on the subject over on his channel Our Own Devices.

With the invention of portable carbonation machines, soda distribution largely moved out of pharmacies and into dedicated soda fountains, where an attendant known as a “soda jerk” mixed carbonated water from a dispenser on the countertop with flavoured syrups, ice cream, and other ingredients to create a wide variety of sweet, refreshing concoctions. Soda fountains – and soda in general – were especially popular in the United States thanks to local dry laws and the Prohibition experiment of 1919-1933, which had shuttered traditional social hubs like bars and taverns. And due to the ubiquity of the soda fountain model, major soft-drink companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, and Dr. Pepper made most of their money selling not pre-bottled soda but rather flavoured syrup concentrate. Indeed, this is still largely the case today, since the automatic soda fountains found in convenience stores and fast-food restaurants work by mixing carbonated water generated with a pressurized carbon dioxide with flavoured syrup dispensed from a bag or tank.

However, starting in the 1920s, improvements in industrial bottling technology and the invention of the bottle vending machine led to the steady rise in popularity of pre-bottled soft drinks, which by the 1960s had almost completely overtaken the soda fountain model. Another major driver of this change was World War II – because of course it was. Because it was not practical to set up soda fountains on the battlefield, American troops drank soft drinks like Coca-Cola out of bottles – which were supplied to the front in the millions. Indeed, as part of a patriotic – and not at all self-serving – initiative, in 1941 Coca-Cola president Robert Woodruff announced that:

“..every man in uniform gets a bottle of Coca-Cola for five cents, wherever he is and whatever it costs the company.”

Following the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942, Coca-Cola executives flew to Algeria to set up a bottling plant to more easily supply drinks to the troops; by the end of the war, 64 bottling lines were operating across both the European and Pacific theatres of operation. At war’s end, returning GIs brought their bottle-drinking habits home with them, starting a nation-wide trend. The conflict also gave people across Europe and Asia their first taste of Coca-Cola, helping the company grow into a globe-spanning, multi-billion-dollar juggernaut.

More on Coca-Cola’s rather fascinating “successful failure” story in the Bonus Facts in a bit.

In the 1950s, traditional glass soda bottles began facing competition from a new innovation: the metal drink can, first introduced in 1954 by the Royal Crown Cola Company – better known today as RC Cola. The company would later roll out the first all-aluminium drink can in 1964. These early cans had to be opened with a punch-style “church key” can opener, but in 1962, the Pittsburgh Brewing Company introduced the ring-pull tab. Then, in 1975, Falls City Beer introduced the modern “Sta-Tab” – which remains the standard opening mechanism for both alcoholic and soft drink cans to this day.

This all now brings us to the question of why do we like fizzy drinks so much? What is it about carbonation that makes flavoured or even plain water taste so much better? The answer, surprisingly, may be that all of us are a just little bit masochistic. The “tingling” sensation you feel when you drink soda is actually the pain receptors on your tongue being stimulated by collapsing bubbles. This, in turn, stimulates the release of endorphins, enhancing the reward signal already produced by the sugar in the drink. This suggests that we enjoy soda for much the same reason we enjoy eating spicy food; indeed just as with spicy food, a love of carbonated drinks seems to be a uniquely human trait – lab mice and other animals won’t touch the stuff. However, bubbles aren’t the end of the story. In 2013, researchers at the University of Montreal placed test subjects in a hyperbaric chamber and made them try various carbonated and non-carbonated drinks. Even though the high pressure in the chamber eliminated the bubbles, subjects still overwhelmingly preferred drinks with large amounts of dissolved carbon dioxide. This indicates that much of the “bite” that gives carbonated water its appeal comes not from the bubbles but from carbonic acid, which, in addition to stimulating pain receptors, also helps to counteract the taste of sugar. Indeed, soda companies often add additional acidity to their products – usually in the form of citric or phosphoric acid – for this very reason. This is why a can of Coca-Cola tastes refreshing despite containing nearly 10 tablespoons of sugar – yes, about the same as two Cadbury Creme Eggs. You’re welcome. Furthermore, research suggests that carbonation fools our tongues into perceiving a drink as being colder than it really is – though the exact mechanism behind this phenomenon is still not fully understood.

So why do we love soda so much? Because, in the end, all we are is walking, sentient bags of flesh whose imperfectly-evolved nervous systems are easily fooled by all sorts of random stimuli. Cheers!

And bas a fun little Bonus Fact is that while manufacturers put the same amount of CO₂ in cans as bottles of soda, when placed in plastic, which is more permeable to CO₂, the carbonation will dissipate relatively quickly over time. In fact, if stored in direct sunlight, in 3 months, soda in plastic can lose up to 15% of its carbonation. Cans of soda, on the other hand, can have their taste affected by bits of metal that are dissolved from the inner lining, and again, the warmer the container, the greater the effect. This is one of the reasons many people have preferences when drinking soda from glass vs. plastic vs. metal containers.

On this note of fizz, ever wonder if tapping a can of shaken soda actually reduces the likelihood of it fizzing over when you open it? Well, if you have you should know we did an extensive study to answer this question. See our video Does Tapping a Shaken Can of Soda Actually Reduce Foam?

Bonus Fact:

Much like other early soft drinks as mentioned, the sickly sweet sugar water known as Coca-Cola was initially marketed as a magical cure-all tonic for every kind of “nervous affliction” imaginable from headaches to hysteria- a condition that, fun fact, used to be treated in women through medically administered orgasms.

Of course, as with so many new ventures, when it first became available to the public on May 8, 1886, Coca-Cola was a bit of a flop, averaging only about 9 glasses per day sold in the first year. This was despite the fact that it debuted at one of the most popular soda fountains in Atlanta, Georgia, located in Jacob’s Pharmacy. For reference here, their gross earnings on soda sales, according to the owner of the pharmacy, Dr. Joseph Jacobs, was about $150 per day (or about $4,100 today), of which Coca-Cola accounted for about 45 cents daily in the first year.

This is mildly surprising considering not only is Coca-Cola reasonably tasty, but it was also, as mentioned, being marketed by the medical professionals involved as a cure for countless medical issues, including a rather serious one in morphine addiction. On top of that, they also pitched it as something of the Viagra of its day… (No doubt this effect on men is partially how it was supposed to go about curing hysteria in women…)

And if the marketing and flavour didn’t work, their trump card was the fact that it contained coca leaf extract, a.k.a. cocaine, as well as lime juice which aids in cocaine absorption in the stomach for maximal bang for your buck on the drug element. Seemingly this should have seen it become a huge hit rather quickly, though it is noteworthy that various cocaine products were widely available at the time, so perhaps people didn’t have need to come back to Coca-Cola to get their fix.

Whatever the case, as to how its inventor, pharmacist John Pemberton, came up with the tonic, he was specifically looking for a cure for his own morphine addiction. You see, Pemberton was a former Confederate soldier who nearly had his head lopped off in the Battle of Columbus. During his recovery from his wounds, as with so many others at the time, he became addicted to morphine and so was looking for something to wean him off the habit.

This all led him to experimenting with coca-leaf extract, and thus Pemberton’s French Wine Coca was born, which he claimed did the trick. (Though it should be noted that when he died of stomach cancer two years later in 1888, he was still addicted to morphine.)

Unfortunately for him, his initial concoction also included alcohol (from wine), which became banned in Atlanta where he lived in the same year he debuted his tonic, resulting in him substituting the wine with sugar and citric acid. He also, of course, mixed the whole thing with carbonated water, owing to, at the time, fizzy water being thought to be good for your health as noted.

Finally, in 1886 Pemberton was ready to start selling what would eventually become arguably the most famous non-water beverage brand on Earth. After a deal was struck with Dr. Joseph Jacobs of the aforementioned Jacobs’ Pharmacy and the soda fountain operator within, Willis Venable, Coca-Cola finally graced the world with its presence, selling for 5 cents per serving (about $1.38 today).

Poor sales and a loan Venable had received from Jacobs’ to build a house ultimately saw Venable trade his 1/3 stake to Jacobs in repayment of said cash advance. As for Jacobs, he had little interest in producing and marketing the drink and was generally annoyed with having to deal with Pemberton and his huge financial problems. Thus, not long after he acquired Venable’s share, he sold his entire stake in Coca-Cola to fellow pharmacist Asa Candler, for, to quote Jacobs “some stock in a glass factory on South Pryor Street… This factory, on which the insurance had been allowed to lapse, was destroyed shortly afterward by fire. In addition to the stock I was to receive some odds and ends such as bed pans, pewter syringes, wooden pill boxes, and empty bottles.”

Candler, after buying out the remaining shares, including from Pemberton, would start the process that turned the brand into the beverage powerhouse it is today, by 1919 himself selling the brand and recipe for a cool $25 million (about $361 million today) to a group of investors.

As for Pemberton, when he sold his stake to Candler he did have a thought to leave a partial share to his son, Charles, in the hopes the morphine-addiction curing drink would someday become a huge hit. However, ultimately Charles and he opted to just take as much money as they could get at the time and forgo any further stake in Coca-Cola. Pemberton died shortly thereafter in poverty and his son Charles followed him about six years later, ironically dying of a morphine overdose.

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