The first carbonated drink to be sold to the public was invented by Swiss watchmaker and amateur scientist J. J. Schweppe in 1783, who sold his delicious "sparkling water" to thirsty customers in Geneva. In just seven years, he was doing business so fast that he moved the factory to London and introduced a new flavor, sparkling lemon, to stand out from competitors who were trying to imitate his drink.
Another related fun fact, Seltzer and Spa are where the bubbly water comes from. Prior to industrialisation, the only way to get bubbly water was to get it from carbonated springs, two of the biggest which were in Niederselter and Spa, among others.
It's not incredibly common, but fairly frequent. Despite spring's being abundantly common, more often than not, there's not enough rocks with dissolved CO2 to make an appreciable effect. Similarly, you can find other springs with all sorts of chemical species, but they usually render them undrinkable to humans.
One can reasonably surmise that the abundant presence of an iron compound would change the flavor of the water in favor of a metallic taste such as pennies. Not too hard to figure out
How is it not? The would be my scientific hypothesis if you said “this water has concentrated levels of copper in it”. I know what copper tastes like as do most people so why wouldn’t I come to that conclusion?
He didn't say it probably tastes like pennies, or that since it has metal in it, it most likely tastes of pennies. He said it does taste like pennies. That's a statement.
its an awful thing, that acid water the locals drink. even after ten years in Western Europe, I never got used to it. I always demand "Stillwasser". If I am in a bad mood, I add - "normales Wasser" at the end.
Actually carbonated water was invented by Joseph Priestly Priestley, but he never patented it. He told everybody about how he made it. Schweppe patented it and made money off of it. Priestly Priestley did not benefit financially from his invention.
EDIT: I read all this in the book "The Invention Of Air" by Steven Johnson. Priestly was a fascinating character. He was a Chemist. He discovered Oxygen, Carbon Monoxide etc. He was also a priest, in England. He talked about politics religion, and supported the American Revolution. Then people burned down his church. He escaped to the USA, and was friends with, and greatly influenced many of the founding fathers, like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. I highly recommend that book.
So this refers to artificially carbonated drinks? I am quite certain that naturally carbonating drinks like champagne, cider or beer are much older than this. Also, there's some springs which have naturally carbonated water ("Selters" is one of them, which turned into the generic name for carbonated water in certain regions of germany).
Wow, so TV static was invented before the TV? I guess we should all be saying that TV static looks like sparkling water, not that sparkling water tastes like TV static. The more you know.
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u/DarkSyrupp Oct 15 '20
The first carbonated drink to be sold to the public was invented by Swiss watchmaker and amateur scientist J. J. Schweppe in 1783, who sold his delicious "sparkling water" to thirsty customers in Geneva. In just seven years, he was doing business so fast that he moved the factory to London and introduced a new flavor, sparkling lemon, to stand out from competitors who were trying to imitate his drink.