Joseph Priestley, who shares credit for the discovery of oxygen with the Swedish chemist Karl Wilhelm Scheele, also invented the fizzy drink.
While living in Leeds, England, in the 1770’s, he had a brewery for a neighbour and it provided him with abundant carbon dioxide for his experiments with gases.
In 1772 he published directions for “impregnating water with fixed air (carbon dioxide), in order to communicate to it the peculiar spirits and virtues of Pyrmont water” – named after a fashionable German mineral spring near Hamlin. Priestley hoped that this carbonated water might be effective against scurvy [a condition caused by deficiency of ascorbic acid (vitamin C)]. It was not but the fizzy drink caught on!
Hendrik
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