The good Italian drinks wine, the common Brit sips tea, and the quintessential American guzzles soda. Perhaps more than any other American cultural export, soda has achieved total global saturation. If Coca-Cola’s name is any proof, we can see it scrawled across billboards, buildings, and bars in the most distant corners of this planet. Indeed, soda runs deep in the veins of American culture and history. It should come as no surprise that the bubbly nectar has its origins at the very foundation of America as a nation. In fact, the two are nearly twins. Soda and America are the same age and share identical parentage. As it turns out, the founding fathers (yes those ones on the money) were some of the same men involved in the discoveries that enabled us to infuse our beverages with fizz.
Carbonated water is neither new nor manmade. Effervescence exists naturally in certain springs of mineral water. Subterranean aquifers in areas with limestone dissolve the mineral over time and carbonic acid enters the water. When the water comes to the surface, the carbonic acid bubbles out in an effervescence of CO₂. Excess carbon dioxide in an aquifer will also enter the water as carbonic acid due to pressure. These naturally carbonated springs have been enjoyed since ancient times. The spring from which Perrier gets their water, called Vergèze, has been known since Roman times at least.
While broadly recognized, these springs were not understood chemically until the late 18th century. The first breakthrough came from a Scottish chemist and physicist, Joseph Black, who worked extensively with carbonic and alkali substances during the 1760s. He noticed patterns in the behavior of a gas that he encountered in his work and realized it was likely the same gas that came from a vat of fermenting beer or certain natural springs like Pyrmont of Germany or Grotta del Cane in Italy (where CO₂ blankets the floor so dogs will suffocate but not humans). He named this gas “fixed air.”
The newly named air became a subject of scientific curiosity in the small academic circles of the late 18th century. It was commonly recognized that this gas was poisonous as animals would expire when subjected to it. Accordingly, the gas was also called choke-damp, spiritus sylvestre, gas carbonum, and mephitic air. It was this fact of suffocation that first introduced Joseph Priestley to the gas in his youth and would catapult him into a life of science obsessed with air.
In 1767, the young Englishman Joseph Priestley got a new job as a preacher and moved. As he was waiting for his quarters to be prepared, he temporarily took up residence across from a brewery owned by Jakes and Nell. A gas-obsessed chemist, he quickly became fascinated with the fixed air that flowed out of the fermenting beer and made the brewery his personal laboratory. Before long, he had discovered that he could pour water between two glasses above the vats and impregnate it with the gas in a matter of minutes. In 1767, Priestley had discovered how to make artificially carbonated water. He would boast, “By the way, I make the most delightful Pyrmont Water, and can impregnate any water or wine etc., with that spirit in two minutes.”
The bubbly breakthrough was the subject of considerable academic admiration. The chemist published a pamphlet, Impregnating Water with Fixed Air, in 1772. Priestley, who was close friends with Benjamin Franklin, was lauded by many of the American scientists who would help to start the revolution just years later. Some thought the water could solve issues of sanitation in public water supplies. Letters exchanged by Franklin, Jefferson, and Benjamin Rush (who trained under Joseph Black) praise the discovery as consequential. Rush, a trained doctor, wrote to Franklin, “The Doctor [Priestley] deserves great Credit for his Application of fixed Air to Medicine.”
Credit he received, for the early days of carbonated water were full of medical optimism. Carbonated water, long associated with healthful springs where spas existed, was thought to have certain healing qualities. The British Navy was quick to ascribe to this notion and took great interest in Priestley’s discovery. An Irish doctor, named David Macbride, had popularized the view that scurvy was caused by fixed air leaving the body and thus putrefying it. He thought that fermented foods could replace the fixed air and cure scurvy. “Wort of malt,” or fermented barley, was used by the Royal Navy in hopes of curing scurvy, but Priestley’s 1772 findings of impregnating water with fixed air offered an alternative source of fixed air. He presented his work to the Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty. When Captain Cook sailed later that year, he carried with him both barley malt and soda machines. As late as 1784, a medical book alleged that “Liquids impregnated with fixed air for common drink, and wholesome air” were a salubrious treatment for the sailors’ disease.
Aside from scurvy, the new fizzy invention was believed to cure kidney stones. 18th century physicians believed that the stones were made in large part of carbonic minerals and that the gas would help to dissolve them. English physician William Withering, a friend of Joseph Priestley, tried injecting fixed air directly into the bladder of patients and encouraged them to drink large quantities of fixed air water. He likely even counseled Benjamin Franklin to do the same when he had stones in the 1780s. Another British doctor, Matthew Dobson, published A Medical Commentary on Fixed Air in 1779 encouraging the use of carbon dioxide as a topical disinfectant. This book was in Thomas Jefferson’s personal library which would later be sold to the Library of Congress in 1815.
While a high level of carbonation can create preserving properties in beverages, the drink’s medicinal qualities were far over-hyped in its early days. It cured neither scurvy nor stones. Priestley recognized his invention as happy yet ultimately unimpactful and his later work with oxygen would be far more consequential. Nevertheless, his discovery of a method to impregnate water with CO₂ gas would lead to a great commercial boom in carbonated beverages. While it was not medicinal, it certainly was enjoyable.
In 1770 the Swedish chemist Tobern Bergman built on Priestley’s discovery and showed that chalk combined with sulfuric acid produced carbonated water. Businesses began hawking fizzy waters to eager drinkers. Some of Priestley’s later research was even funded with money from carbonated water businessmen who frequently consulted the doctor on certain improvements to their technical processes. By 1783, Jacob Schweppes had scaled techniques of carbonating water to a commercial level. He moved his eponymous company to London in 1790. His company, the world’s first purveyor of soft drinks, directly links Priestley’s breakthrough with the ginger ale we sip today.
The soda fountain was born in 1819 as the brain child of American Samuel Fahnestock and the rest is history. After this, soda would become a popular and increasingly accessible beverage for the masses to enjoy. By the end of the 1800s, Coca Cola was born and America has since dominated the global market for fizzy drinks. Modern carbonated drink companies use decidedly more sophisticated techniques to fizz their drinks. Many extract CO₂ from fermentations or exhaust chimneys with chemicals that scrub out carbon dioxide. The gas is screened through water to filter out impurities and is then pressurized for later use. Some natural mineral water companies even collect CO₂ separately from the water and later recombine them.
It is remarkable that the close friend of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Priestley, who ended up permanently immigrating to the young United States, started this commercial movement. At one time the product of elusive springs in exotic locations, the scientific work of Joseph Priestley moved carbonated water into the modern era of mass production and mass enjoyment. Today, when we drink seltzers and sodas, we can think back to the origins of the bubbly drink and how it coincides with the origins of America itself.
“A Medical Commentary on Fixed Air.” A Medical Commentary on Fixed Air – Wythepedia: The George Wythe Encyclopedia, http://lawlibrary.wm.edu/wythepedia/index.php/Medical_Commentary_on_Fixed_Air.
Beer, John J. “The chemistry of the founding fathers.” (1976): 405.
Elliot, John. The Medical Pocket-Book; for Those Who Are, and for All Who Wish, to Be, Physicians. : Containing a Short but Plain Account of the Symptoms, Causes, and Methods of Cure, of the Diseases Incident to the Human Body: Including Such as Require Surgical Treatment: Together with the Virtues, and Doses, of Medicinal Compositions, and Simples. / Extracted from the Best Authors, and Digested into Alphabetical Order. by John Elliot, M.D., https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N14558.0001.001/1:5.126?rgn=div2%3Bview.
“From Benjamin Franklin to Joseph Priestley, 7 June 1782,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-37-02-0277. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 37, March 16 through August 15, 1782, ed. Ellen R. Cohn. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003, pp. 444–446.]
Johnson, S. (2009). The invention of air: A story of science, faith, revolution, and the birth of America. Riverhead Books.
Marshall, James L., 1940- & Marshall, Virginia R. Rediscovery of the Elements: Joseph Black. Magnesia and Fixed Air, article, Autumn 2014; Indianapolis, Indiana. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc501453/m1/1/: accessed February 13, 2022), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT College of Arts and Sciences.
“Scurvy and Vitamin C.” DASH Home, https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8852139/Mayberry.html?sequence=2.
Steen, D. “Carbonated beverages.” Chemistry and technology of soft drinks and fruit juices (2005): 150-180.
“To Benjamin Franklin from Benjamin Rush, 1 May 1773,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-20-02-0111. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 20, January 1 through December 31, 1773, ed. William B. Willcox. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976, pp. 192–193.]
“William Withering’s “On Calculus Complaints”: Résumé, [after 24 August 1782],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-38-02-0030. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 38, August 16, 1782, through January 20, 1783, ed. Ellen R. Cohn. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006, pp. 39–41.]
Tequila’s predecessor, pulque, has been around for thousands of years. The Aztecs developed a method for tapping agave plants for their sap. The people who performed this task were known as tlachiqueros and were experts in collecting and fermenting agave into an alcoholic drink. This industry still exists today, but has been hurt by the tequila industry and modernization.
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In Ghana, palm wine has been an important cultural drink for centuries. Europeans introduced distillation, and palm wine was distilled into akpeteshie. When British colonial government attempted to tax spirits in Ghana, locals opted to distill their gin at home. The drink became a symbol of pride and anti-colonial sentiment. Since independence, the spirit has been legal and culturally salient.
Water kefir is a simple fermented beverage made from water, sugar, and a water kefir grain. The Kefir Chicks, based out of Western Pennsylvania, are bringing the drink to market with a message focused on gut health. The drink is full of microbes and probiotics that can help to replenish the gastrointestinal microbiome. And they will teach you how to make it! Just beware, the living culture is temperamental and the drink may explode.
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