WEBVTT - The Amazing History of Soda 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:02.000 This episode of Stuff you Should Know is brought to 0:00:02.000 --> 0:00:04.880 you by Squarespace. Whether you need a landing page, a 0:00:04.880 --> 0:00:08.639 beautiful gallery, a professional blog, or an online store, it's 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:11.200 all possible with a square space website. And right now, 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:13.000 listeners to Stuff you Should Know can start a free 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:16.000 trial today. Just go to squarespace dot com and enter 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:18.600 the offer code s t U f F and you'll 0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:22.080 get ten percent off your first purchase. Squarespace set your 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:27.360 website apart. Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know Front House, 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:35.920 Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:39.040 I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:42.600 Jerry and this is Stuff you Should Know. You're gonna 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:46.680 love it. I think I just said this is remarkably 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:51.519 interesting right before we hit record. Well, you're right, because 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:53.800 I don't know what are you gonna call this thing? 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:58.600 How so sounds were? He trailed off. It's not the 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:02.840 best title. It's a well that's being gone too before. 0:01:03.760 --> 0:01:08.759 Oh um, it's really the history of soda kind of yeah, 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:11.520 you know, I just think it's interesting. I never really 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:14.280 thought about it. I didn't either, And and this is 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:17.240 Chuck to me, one of those great examples of how 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:22.160 you can take anything and really tease out all these 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:27.280 different parts to it. Sure, um, and and that just 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:30.800 about everything is more interesting than it appears on the surface. Yeah. 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:36.560 Because soda, as we will learn, affected America in the 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:41.800 world and continues too. Yeah. Basically all American dominance from 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:47.360 the mid nineteenth century on is because of soda. But 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:51.400 you are from Ohio, So do you say pop? Used to? Yeah, 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:54.040 you depopped. I don't even know what I'm saying soda 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:57.520 now And now I say coke? You even say coke? 0:01:57.560 --> 0:02:00.400 Win you want to sprite in the South, I want 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:02.560 a green coke? You say, can I have a coke? 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:06.680 What kind? It's probably Yeah, Well we're in Atlanta, you know, 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:09.079 this is the birthplace of coke. It is which we'll 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:13.040 we'll talk about. We'll talk about um. But the the 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:16.079 initial I guess, the thread that we took into this 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:19.400 topic was soda fountains, right, correct. And when you think 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:22.160 about a soda fountain, this is a good example of 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:24.359 what I was saying. When you think about a soda fountain, 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:30.040 you think about like Bobby Socks teenagers, right, Bill Haley 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:33.840 and the comments, Yeah, the fons sure, hair like perfectly 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:37.960 in place. Yeah, the Fons all drunk Penny first, did 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:40.880 he get drunk? No, that's the that was the joke. 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:43.640 Like Happy Days is so squeaky clean. Wouldn't that really 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:50.160 a great episode if like the Fons was hammered, everybody 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:53.840 just tried to avoid him. Yeah, he'll break the jukebox again. 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:57.320 Um he uh yeah, that would be great. Did you 0:02:57.360 --> 0:03:00.840 know that? That's what um Laverne and Shirley spun off of. Yeah, 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:06.240 Mork and Mindy. Yeah, that's just bizarre that More Can 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:09.680 Mindy and Jon Lovest well sure, yeah, but More Can 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:14.000 Mindy was set in the seventies. Yeah, very weird eighties. 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:17.400 I thought it was the sevenies, seventies based on the 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:23.600 down vests. It was the seventies, all right, I'm pretty sure. 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:27.360 All right. So regardless when you think it's sort of 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:30.799 fountains to think of the fifties that the seventies, right 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:33.280 in Happy Days wasn't in the fifties that came out 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:36.280 in the seventies. Yeah, man, there was a big revival 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:40.720 the fifties culture in the seventies. Yeah, Like there are Greece, 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:44.560 there always is, um. You know, people tend to reflect 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:49.720 back twenty years or so. Nostalgia. Yeah, with nostalgia, there's 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:53.000 a great things were so much better back then. There's 0:03:53.000 --> 0:03:56.280 a great podcast episode, one of the funniest things I've 0:03:56.280 --> 0:03:59.760 ever heard my life from the Great Andy Daily that 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:03.680 centered around shan on Uh and they got it. I 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:05.400 can't remember who he did it with, but it was 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:09.360 might have been Matt Besser, No, I can't remember, but 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:13.560 they did these characters and it was all trying out 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:16.360 for Shauna and on drinking egg creams and being a 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:19.240 professional water skier. It was very, very funny. They're just 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:21.719 making it up. Yeah, I mean, I'm not doing it justice, 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:24.119 but just just seek it out. Just type in Andy 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:27.720 Daily shan on Ah and just sit back and get 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:33.520 ready for delighted for an hour. I'll check it out. 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:41.920 But yeah, uh, fifties purity, Bobby socks, good clean fun. 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:45.279 Here's the thing. You're totally wrong if that's your conception 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:47.880 of soda fountains, it's right. By the time the fifties 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:51.280 rolled around, soda fountains were already so far on their 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:54.920 way out that basically, by the fifties, what happened what 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:58.359 would happen to bars in the seventies thanks to the 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:01.200 fern bar, it already happ been to soda fountains. By 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:06.600 the forties and fifties, what was once handcrafted drinks made 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:10.200 from freshly prepared ingredients that were mixed there on the 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:16.480 premises had been replaced by pre mixed stuff and canned 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:19.720 ingredients that were put together by people who didn't give 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:24.160 a darn about you or your family. Uh, the forties 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:26.479 and fifties were not the heyday of the soda fountain. 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:30.520 It's actually much older than that. Yeah, boy, that's a 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:33.400 setup from the old days. It's getting the way back 0:05:33.400 --> 0:05:41.560 machine and go back to Europe when everyone was like, 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:45.200 you know what these mineral waters. We've been drinking this 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:47.600 stuff for hundreds of years, and even before that, the 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:50.440 Romans bathed in it. Yeah, it's great for you. You 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:53.320 drink it, you bathe in it, you splash it on 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:56.760 your sister, do you want her to be well? Deliver 0:05:56.880 --> 0:06:01.920 right right, It'll cure everything. It's the cure all back 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:04.640 in the days where they thought, like, drink this one thing, 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:08.960 it'll cure up your STD and your headache, your hangover 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:11.599 all at once, all at one time, when really all 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:15.440 it did was carrying up that stomach. That's right, the 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:18.920 dirty little secret. But the idea that, no, they didn't, 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:21.279 they didn't for centuries as a matter of fact. But 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:26.520 the idea that you could drink um like naturally carbonated 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:30.080 mineral water and that it could cure your health, or 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:33.080 at the very least it was delightful. People wanted to 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:35.320 figure out how to how to get that if you 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:39.479 didn't live near a naturally carbonated spring. That's right, which, 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:41.279 by the way, I was researching this. Did you know 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:45.599 pellegrino is not naturally carbonated? Uh? Had No, I don't 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:48.880 know anything about pellegrino. Well, it's a natural mineral water, 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:52.599 but they carbonated there. I didn't realize it wasn't carbonated. Yeah, 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:57.279 that doesn't surprise me. It surprised me. Are you boycotting? No? 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:01.200 I love this stuff. I was just surprised. You mean 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:06.400 it's anything these days, naturally carbonated and bottled. Dude, Now 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:08.720 that you say that, you've just given me a great 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:12.000 opening to mention this book I just read, called The 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:17.280 Dorrito Effect. You have to read it. It's about the 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:22.520 food we eat today and just how incredibly manufactured it is. 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:26.480 But the really refreshing thing about it is that anybody 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:31.040 can read this book. It's basically a political It doesn't 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:33.760 lay this at anybody's feet. It doesn't blame anybody. It 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:37.160 doesn't suggest there's anything nefarius going on. It's just like, 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:42.240 here's here's what here's our food right now. It's really interesting. 0:07:42.640 --> 0:07:45.280 Check it out, really approachable, interesting book. They don't even 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:49.080 blame big Derrito. No. I mean they basically trace the 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:53.480 origin of our current food standards back to the invention 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:56.920 of the dorrito, hence the name. But it's a it's 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.560 a really great book, definitely worth reading. Uh, I'll check 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:02.520 that out. And people ask us for book rex all 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:05.160 the time, so that's one. Yeah, pay attention you. We 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:06.760 got that for me and I've read it in like 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:09.680 two days. Did read it? She hasn't ready. I grabbed 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:11.760 it first, Oh I got you. Yeah. So she bought 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:14.920 it for the family. Oh yeah, okay, sure that the family. 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:16.360 I thought it was a gift, like I read this 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:18.280 and now I'm going to give it to you. No, 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:21.840 she read about it, got you, thought about me. Mine 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:27.040 bought it and I alright. Uh so mineral water was 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:30.240 very appealing. Uh and and human being said, you know 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:33.719 what they'd be great if we could bottle this junk ourselves, 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:36.920 even though bottling isn't really a thing yet, or at least, 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:42.920 you know, not anything that worked stoneware and a cork. Yeah. 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:49.200 Uh so a seventeen sixty seven is when Um, Joseph 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:52.560 Priestley we've talked about before and oh too, yeah more 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:56.600 than once British chemist he said, you know what, I 0:08:56.840 --> 0:09:00.960 figured this out for a minute, some yeast mash and 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:03.880 UM put it in this water, gets you pretty messed up, 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:08.000 and look at it, bubble. It's delightful and everybody's like, whoa, 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:13.680 that's a decent approximation to semi carbonated water. Yeah, not 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:20.200 a bad first step thought. Uh So sixteen years later, uh, 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:25.000 there was a Swiss scientist named Johann Yuko Schwepp. M 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:29.520 hmm yeah, sound familiar. Uh. He said, you know what, 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:33.199 I've actually built a device, this hand crank compression pump, 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:36.200 and um, I can make this stuff, and I'm gonna 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:38.760 found a company called Swepts because that's my name, and 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:42.800 you're gonna be hearing it for centuries. And he actually 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:45.400 he was definitely onto something. What Schwept figured out was 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:48.680 not just this invention that he made. But he also 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:53.120 realized that to carbonate water, which let's talk about carbonating water, 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:56.920 shall we artificially carbonating? Guy should say, to carbonate it, 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:02.679 there's some condition that are most conducive to carbonating water 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:06.600 because C O two molecules and H two old molecules 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:09.640 do not like to get together. Yeah, you'll just throw 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:11.840 it in there and they're like start hugging it out 0:10:12.040 --> 0:10:14.480 right and say great, now drink me. Yeah. As a 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:18.400 matter of fact, there their bond angles, I believe, are 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:21.760 totally different, and they're they're at such a such an 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:24.520 angle that like they just do not go together very well. 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:28.520 But Yakov Schwept said, you know what, I wonder if 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:32.200 you use really really cold temperatures, like near freezing water, 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:36.080 that would help. He was correct, correct. Uh. And also 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:40.120 if you put it under pressure, maybe say seven atmospheres, Yeah, 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:43.320 it would it would help. He was correct with that too. 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:46.320 That's right, And that's what you need cold and pressure 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:49.439 and uh, if you get that going, then that gas 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:52.880 dissolves into the liquid and those molecules start to party 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:56.640 and hug it out, and uh, you know that's what. 0:10:56.720 --> 0:10:59.040 It's pretty amazing that someone figured that out way back then, 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:02.280 but it's even more amazing that it wasn't like he's like, 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:04.800 I'll just take the CEO to canister and this cold 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:07.360 water and put it together under pressure. This dude had 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:10.800 to make his own CEO too, So he he used 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:16.000 the old surfu sulfuric acid and powdered marble combination, right, 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:19.000 which is, um, we'll talk about it's kind of dangerous 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:22.079 to put together. But this is so to to create 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:27.880 carbonated water, Schwepps had to first create carbon dioxide, so 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:29.960 he had a lot of stuff going on. He was 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:33.000 the first guy to come up with a mechanized version 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:38.080 of creating carbonated water. Pretty amazing, Yeah, but it took many, many, 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:41.560 many more years before it became even close to a 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:44.920 perfected process. Yeah. I mean, as you'll see, it happened. 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:47.480 Many people chipped in over the course of a lot 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:52.920 of time. Um, namely Mr Charles Plinth eight thirteen, he 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:56.880 invented the or I don't know if he invented I 0:11:56.920 --> 0:11:59.560 think he might have invented or at least he perfected 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:03.840 the soda siphon, which if you've ever seen an episode 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:07.120 of The Three Stooges, you we've got when you don't 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:10.080 have this. No, I don't have one. You gotta get one. 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:12.719 I got a soda stream. I'm all good, Okay, you 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:17.640 don't need women. Uh. And that means he could either 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:21.400 squirt someone in the face and have a comedy routine, 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:26.240 or he could uh service some carbonated liquid. Yeah, which 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:28.520 is great, but you have to keep refilling that thing 0:12:28.559 --> 0:12:31.600 at the source. Yeah, that was the problem. And especially 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:33.760 I mean, like if you're if you're having to make 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:36.280 your own CEO two. It's one thing to just use 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:39.960 as little chargers today, it's it's not much of a problem. 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:41.720 But if you have to make your own CEO two 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:45.839 first before you create this siphon, yeah, you're yeah, that's 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:48.920 a that's a big process. So again, like these guys 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:51.800 are kind of like poking away at the edges of 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:56.480 the problem of coming up with mass produced carbonated water, 0:12:56.800 --> 0:13:01.079 big big problems, and they're contributing an add to to 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:05.640 this nutcracker, but no one's actually cracked the nut yet. 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:09.320 It would be eight thirty two when a man named 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:14.200 John Matthews. Yeah he's American, born in England. Best of 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:18.480 both worlds. Uh. He developed a chamber, a lead line 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:22.800 chamber where he could actually mix he could actually generate 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:25.640 that CEO two. So Swepts had already generated the CEO 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:30.160 two before YE got you. Yeah, yeah, I thought Matthews 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.480 was the first to do that. No, Okay, Schwepps actually 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:39.040 was creating CEO two. He he didn't have this self 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:42.679 contained apparatus that that Matthews came up with. That was 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:46.280 his his huge innovation. Who Matthews? Yeah yeah, I mean 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:49.400 he mixed it together without water and he created carbonated 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:53.439 water and you could bottle it. But um, bottling wasn't 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:56.400 like a big uh. You couldn't mass bottle it at 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:58.640 this point. No, and what he came up with this 0:13:58.760 --> 0:14:02.440 invention that he came up with was um it was 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:07.239 big enough to serve a decent sized clientele. Going from 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:09.760 you know, like the Schwepps era invention where you could 0:14:09.760 --> 0:14:14.320 make twenty of these a day, twenty carbonated drinks a day, 0:14:14.840 --> 0:14:16.800 all of a sudden, with Matthew's invention, you can make 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:21.280 like a hundreds. Um. But it was it was immobile. 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:24.320 So it was either good for bottling, which at the 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:27.200 time bottling sucked in America. The glass wasn't good enough 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:33.040 to bottle stuff under pressure, or you could make carbonated 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:35.320 drinks there on site, and that's what it led to, 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:39.480 was directly the creation of the soda fountain, the place 0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:43.200 where you would go get at soda. Who read for him. Yeah, 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:45.720 so we'll take a little break and we'll come back 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:51.560 with one final gentleman who, although he failed, he had 0:14:51.560 --> 0:15:02.960 a big impact on the soda fountain industry. You know 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:04.920 how when you get something done with just the click 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:06.720 of a mouse and you get to put it off 0:15:06.760 --> 0:15:08.440 of your to do list once and for all, it 0:15:08.480 --> 0:15:12.560 feels so good. That's the feeling of stamps dot com. Chuck. 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:15.360 I like that kind of simple action, my friend. You 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:17.600 can get your mailing and shipping done without leaving your 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:20.560 desk thanks to stamps dot com because it turns your 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:23.800 PC or Mac into your own personal post office that 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:27.320 never closes. Yeah, right there, on your own personal post 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:29.760 office that never closes. You can buy in print official 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:33.360 US postage for any letter or any package using your 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:35.880 own computer and printer. Then you just hand it off 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:38.680 to your friendly mail carrier or drop it in the mailbox. 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:40.720 You'll never have to go to the post office again. 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:43.400 That's right, And we have a pretty sweet deal right now. 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:45.440 If you sign up for Stamps dot com. All you 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:47.080 have to do is use our offer code stuff, and 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:49.840 you get the following special offer, a four week trial 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:54.640 plus dollar bonus offtware including postage and a handy dandy 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:57.280 digital scale. Yep, so don't wait. Go to stamps dot 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:00.000 com before you do anything else. Click on the microphone 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:01.960 at the top of the homepage and type in s 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.320 t U f F that Stamps dot com. Enter stuff 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:23.560 all right, Benjamin silly Man? Yeah, uh Suliman. I believe 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:26.760 it's probably how he preferred to have it pronounced. Don't 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:30.000 you think he was very serious? He probably was. Uh. 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:33.680 He said, you know what, I may be a failure 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:38.000 in my businesses, but I'm gonna go down in history 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:39.920 is maybe the guy who had the most to do 0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:47.400 with the creation of soda in a mass, ubiquate, ubiquitous way. Um. 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:52.760 He was a professor of chemistry at Yale. Go. Uh, geez, 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:58.200 what is her? Right? Are bulldogs? Hois is Georgetown? So 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:02.440 I think it's the bulldogs bulls, gotcha? Uh? The Yale 0:17:02.440 --> 0:17:07.679 Hodgmans isn't. Yeah, he's he went to Yale. Oh you 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:12.120 don't say so. Um, he because he was a chemistry 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:14.120 professor Yale didn't make a ton of money. I want 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:16.880 to make a little deal on the side. And his 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:20.120 whole jam was kind of going back to the old days. 0:17:20.160 --> 0:17:23.760 This is stuff as medicinal, and I'm really gonna move 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:27.240 all my chips in on the medicine angle, which turned 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:30.880 out to not be the best move. No, And it 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:36.200 wasn't necessarily that he just focused on the medicinal aspect 0:17:36.240 --> 0:17:39.560 of it. It was apparently he didn't know how to 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:45.800 create like a fun time establishment. Right. He was Yale 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:51.000 chemistry professor. So he created to um two of the 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:54.439 first basically soda fountains in New York City based on 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:57.560 Matthew's design, which again was a lead chamber where you 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:01.919 put the calcium carbonate and the sulfuric acid together created 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:05.399 C O two. It bubbled up through water to purify it, 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:10.000 and then that purified C two entered a very cold 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:15.159 spring water chamber and bubbled up and created carbonated water. Right, So, 0:18:15.320 --> 0:18:18.639 silly man created two of these houses, and he he 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:21.960 set them up at two very elite places in New York, 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:29.160 the City Hotel and uh the tonteen Coffee House. Right um, 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:31.560 And he started serving this stuff, but again he was 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:34.720 serving in his medicine. And the impression I have is 0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:37.840 that it was kind of like, uh, please give me 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:42.520 your money. Great, here's your medicine, drink it, please get out. 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:48.200 There is no fraternizing, there's no talking. Some other people 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:51.320 noticed this and said, that's a really great idea. Uh 0:18:51.440 --> 0:18:53.720 costs to finally come down enough to where I can 0:18:53.760 --> 0:18:56.280 get some investors and we can open our own pump house, 0:18:56.280 --> 0:18:59.719 our own soda fountains. But we're gonna throw in some books. 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:02.880 We're gonna like promote people talking, and maybe they'll stick 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:05.800 around in order a second one. Right, Yeah, I don't see. 0:19:05.920 --> 0:19:08.560 That's weird though, because the Tonting Coffee House was like 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:12.360 a very social place where people hung out. Well, then 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:14.960 he did something wrong that other people didn't do or 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:17.440 that did better. Well, maybe they were just drinking coffee 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:19.600 because he went under. Well, the whole thing, I mean, 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:25.600 like competitive soda fountains like buried him. But he was 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:27.480 the guy who came up with the idea, so his 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:30.760 he created the legacy. He just wasn't very good at business, 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:33.800 that's right. Hats off to you, silly man. Hats off, 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:37.160 all right. So these other gentlemen opened up more successful 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:39.720 shops then they started popping up. Of course, once it 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:41.879 happens in New York, the next place is going to 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:45.639 be Philly, Baltimore. Yeah, and it was. It was a 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:48.480 legit business. It was a thing. But it was tied 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:52.439 to pharmacies as well. Yeah, which seems weird but not 0:19:52.480 --> 0:19:54.480 when you think about it. No. Um. And one of 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:57.080 the big reasons why it was tied to pharmacists because 0:19:57.119 --> 0:20:03.920 it took tremendous skill to you properly create carbon dioxide. Um. 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:06.760 They blew up. Yes, yeah, oh yeah, like you could 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:10.240 die at a soda fountains hanging out, Um they blew up. 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:14.000 The sulfuric gacid could leach into the finished product and 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:16.959 you could be served a couple of sulfuric acid not 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:19.840 very good. Um. There were a lot of things that 0:20:19.880 --> 0:20:24.360 could go wrong in mixing this. So this is technical, 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:28.160 technical expertise that pharmacists already had, so it made sense 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:31.040 for them to say we got this, which is why 0:20:31.200 --> 0:20:33.760 it is. It does become less weird to associate the 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:36.840 soda fountain with the pharmacy, which it would very soon 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:41.960 become basically like like hand in hand with Yeah, you know, 0:20:42.000 --> 0:20:44.560 I grew up in Stone Mountain and the old village 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:49.240 of Stone Mountain had a pharmacy straight out of Happy 0:20:49.320 --> 0:20:52.280 Days And you know, I wasn't. It was like the 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:54.840 seventies and eighties, and it sounds like the fifties, but 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:57.359 I would like walk down there and get like a 0:20:57.400 --> 0:20:59.399 coke float and like they would put it on my 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:02.400 parents tab. Oh yeah, yeah, and this was I mean 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:06.800 it seems like like, yeah, literally Happy Days times, but 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:12.680 it was eighty five. It was five. Yeah, I was 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:15.679 like twelve or thirteen. It's pretty walking down to the 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:19.760 old pharmacy thinking about how cool David Hasselhoff is. Yeah. 0:21:20.119 --> 0:21:22.320 Actually I didn't watch night Writer, so I didn't neither. 0:21:22.400 --> 0:21:25.520 I wasn't on the Hasslehoff train. Big fan of his music, 0:21:25.520 --> 0:21:29.400 but not night Rider. But yeah, they would just jerk 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:32.080 me a soda and uh, I don't even think we 0:21:32.080 --> 0:21:34.720 said why they were called soda soda jerks, because that's 0:21:34.760 --> 0:21:37.440 the motion that you would make, you jerked the the 0:21:38.280 --> 0:21:42.120 tap handle or so did jerkers have seen them called 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:44.320 that as well? Or soda throwers? I saw it too, 0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:48.600 like that The reason they were called soda throwers because um, 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:51.120 it took a lot of skill to mix these drinks. 0:21:51.200 --> 0:21:53.640 Very like on the level of the bartenders that were 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:55.040 working at the time. In as a matter of fact, 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:58.719 some bartenders, especially during Prohibition, became soda jerks. Yeah, there 0:21:58.720 --> 0:22:00.920 was a lot of showmanship involved. Right, it's kind of 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:03.320 like a cool job to have. But we haven't reached 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:06.000 that point yet. We're at about the mid nineteenth century 0:22:06.000 --> 0:22:09.480 when it's really starting to get popular and spreading through 0:22:09.640 --> 0:22:12.360 through the major cities of the US. Correct, So they're 0:22:12.359 --> 0:22:15.680 in pharmacies, like you said, because they had skill at 0:22:15.680 --> 0:22:18.600 doing this and it just made sense, and it had 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:21.960 the old the old you know, medicinal tie in, like here, 0:22:22.040 --> 0:22:25.720 drink this tonic that I've made for you, this ginger 0:22:25.800 --> 0:22:28.480 ale or this root beer. And apparently by this time 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:33.920 everybody knew that carbonated water didn't have any real medicinal properties. Well, yeah, 0:22:34.000 --> 0:22:36.960 that was kind of the the joke, not the joke, 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:39.560 but joke was on them. But the so the pharmacists 0:22:39.600 --> 0:22:42.240 would say, well, I'll put some real drugs in here, 0:22:42.240 --> 0:22:44.200 then let's see what happens. Like it didn't have to 0:22:44.240 --> 0:22:48.720 have minerals at this point, right, But people love the fizz, right, 0:22:49.080 --> 0:22:53.240 They were crazy for the fitz still do and putting 0:22:54.160 --> 0:22:57.840 like herbs and drugs and stuff into a drink was 0:22:57.920 --> 0:23:01.240 not an American mid nineteenth entry invention, right. It goes 0:23:01.280 --> 0:23:05.520 back really really far. This is folk medicine, and actually 0:23:05.640 --> 0:23:09.760 in um Europe there was all sorts of stuff that 0:23:09.840 --> 0:23:12.919 we brought over. Like the idea of root beer is 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:17.160 actually way older than Charles hart Hires invention. UM. It 0:23:17.200 --> 0:23:23.280 goes back to UH Native America, UM, Indigenous European groups. 0:23:23.680 --> 0:23:29.240 Just basically anybody who ever put roots embark and ums 0:23:30.000 --> 0:23:32.280 boiled it. And the reason they were making this stuff 0:23:32.760 --> 0:23:36.040 was because the water supply was questionable at the time, 0:23:36.440 --> 0:23:39.840 so you were basically purifying water by fermenting it, by 0:23:39.840 --> 0:23:42.960 brewing it and making an alcoholic drink, and it would 0:23:42.960 --> 0:23:47.320 be called small beer, and small beer was beer. It 0:23:47.480 --> 0:23:49.840 was a drink like that, like the original root beer, 0:23:50.400 --> 0:23:54.280 the original ginger beer. These were small beers and they 0:23:54.280 --> 0:23:56.960 were used to basically drink instead of water, and kids 0:23:57.000 --> 0:23:59.920 would drink it, everybody would drink it. It usually had 0:24:00.040 --> 0:24:04.160 pretty low amounts of alcohol in it. But it's taking 0:24:04.280 --> 0:24:08.600 those that same idea of using things like sassafras or 0:24:08.960 --> 0:24:13.720 um sasparilla, ginger, yeah, or whatever, and putting it together 0:24:13.800 --> 0:24:16.359 with a spark these this new sparkling water that you 0:24:16.400 --> 0:24:18.840 could get from a tap at a soda fountain. That 0:24:19.000 --> 0:24:23.119 was the big innovation. Remarkable. Yeah, and uh, pharmacists at 0:24:23.119 --> 0:24:27.399