The name Joseph Priestley may conjure up vague memories of high school chemistry class since he’s credited with discovering oxygen and other gases. But this 18th-century English scientist with a wide range of interests was also responsible for a product you probably enjoy on a regular basis: sparkling water. Whether you prefer your mixed drinks with seltzer tonic or club soda you have Priestley (and the work of other scientists before you) to thank for inventing the method of artificially injecting carbon dioxide into water which ultimately led to the rise of the soft drink industry.
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Why Americans ARE OBSESSED with Sparkling Water
Priestley a Unitarian minister discovered the process by accident while working on various scientific experiments at a brewery in Leeds England in 1767. This was nearly a decade before the 1776 Declaration of Independence which gave birth to the United States of America. And it was Founding Father Benjamin Franklin who encouraged Priestley's pursuit of science which would eventually lead to Priestley producing carbonated water via an invention he perfected in 1772.
Joseph Priestley first met Benjamin Franklin in a London coffeehouse in 1765 at a weekly club of intellectuals and scientists called The Club of Honest Whigs. Priestley was then a minister and schoolmaster. Franklin encouraged Priestley to study science and to conduct his own experiments. Two years later Priestley discovered that by placing a shallow bowl of water just above a vat of fermenting beer the water became infused with the carbon dioxide rising from the beer vat.
By 1772 Priestley had developed a working system for producing carbonated water and published a pamphlet "Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air" which detailed how the machine worked. "If this discovery … shall be of any use to my countrymen and mankind at large I shall have my reward" Priestley wrote. His invention used sulfuric acid and chalk to produce carbon dioxide which was collected in a pig's bladder and then injected into an inverted water-filled bottle that sat in a bowl of water according to the McGill University Office for Science and Society. For Priestley the whole point of creating artificial carbonated water was for its supposed medicinal benefits. At the time naturally sparkling water was considered a health tonic with supposed healing effects of all kinds.
