A soft drink refers to any liquid beverage that does not contain alcoholic content. The title is most commonly used to refer to carbonated beverages such as sodas and mineral water, although it can technically be applied to juices and milk.
The first carbonated soft drinks were the mineral waters found in some hot springs. Many ancient societies believed that bathing and drinking these fluids had a variety of health benefits. Often a sanctuary or health cult grew around the wells and springs that were the source of these liquids.
It wasn’t until the 1700s that scientists began to discover processes that would allow them to replicate the mineral waters found naturally in those springs. English chemist Joseph Priestley was the first to combine distilled water with carbon dioxide. His work was improved and simplified by John Mervin Nooth, who actually built a carbonation device for commercial sale to pharmacies.
Swedish chemist Torbern Bergman took carbonated soft drinks to the next level, inventing a process by which chalk could be combined with sulfuric acid to create large quantities of artificial carbonated drinks. It was his work that finally made it possible to begin offering carbonated soft drinks to a mass market of consumers.
Carbonated soft drinks first became popular in the United States, when a Yale chemistry professor began selling them in New Haven, Connecticut, beginning in 1806, using a Nooth device. Dealers also began offering the drinks in New York and Philadelphia during the first half of the 19th century. The popularity of these drinks skyrocketed, and by 1830 there were several factories producing soda fountains on a large scale.
One of the early problems in the soft drink industry was containment. When carbonated water was placed in a bottle, enormous pressure was created on whatever was used to close the bottle. This could cause air to escape and the drink to go flat. During this time, hundreds of patents were applied for corking and capping methods, all of which failed to keep bottles sealed over time.
The problem was eventually solved by William Painter, a Baltimore-based machine shop operator, who invented the Crown cork bottle seal. This method was quite successful in keeping the air sealed in the bottle and allowed for the widespread distribution of a variety of carbonated soft drinks.
At this time, the bottles used to distribute soft drinks were made of hand-blown glass. In 1899 the first patent was issued to a company for the automatic manufacture of bottles. In 1903, the Libby Glass Company had opened the first glass bottle plant, and just a few years later they were able to produce up to 58,000 bottles per day.
The 1920s saw a dramatic growth in the popularity of soft drinks, as vending machines began to appear in public places. This was also when the “Home Pak” was invented; a clever marketing tactic that bundled several bottles or cans together, usually a derivative of six, and sold them in cases.
Today, the soda is not just an American tradition, but has traveled the world, with companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi distributing millions of gallons of sodas and other beverages to every country in the world.