Where does Soda water (fizzy water) come from?
Soda water comes from northern England. In 1767 the chemist Joseph Priestley worked out how to make plain water fizzy in Leeds, and within twenty years others had turned his idea into a business.
A bowl over a beer vat
A little after midsummer 1767, Joseph Priestley moved from Warrington to Leeds, into a house next to a large brewery. The fermenting beer gave off 'fixed air', the gas we now call carbon dioxide, and Priestley began to experiment with it. He hung a bowl of water above a vat and found that the water took up the gas and gained a pleasant taste. He offered it to friends and called it his 'happiest' discovery.
From pamphlet to factory
In 1772 Priestley published Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air, which made the gas from chalk and oil of vitriol, or sulphuric acid, instead of beer. The Royal Society gave him its Copley Medal in 1773. He hoped the fizzy water would prevent scurvy at sea, which it does not, and Captain Cook carried improved versions of his apparatus. Others turned it into a business: Thomas Henry of Manchester built the first factory, and Johann Jacob Schweppe began bottling in Geneva in 1783.
Why people say Germany
Germany had sparkling water long before Leeds, but there nature made it. Springs at Selters, in the Taunus mountains of Hesse, give naturally fizzy mineral water, sent out in stoneware bottles from the 17th to the 19th century. In 1787 more than a million Selters bottles were reported to have been exported. The town lives on in 'seltzer', the American word for soda water, while 'soda' comes from the sodium salts, such as bicarbonate of soda, often added for taste.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org › Carbonated water ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Joseph Priestley ↗ · revolutionaryplayers.org.uk ↗ · sciencehistory.org ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Selters ↗
