soft drinks | Page 6

improvement in production and packaging of carbonated soft drinks
meant that by the middle of the nineteenth century a manual bottling line was
capable of lling 100 dozen bottles per day, but the introduction of steam power
increased that to 300 dozen per day. By 1900, it was estimated that 70,000 people
were directly employed in the UK soft drinks industry and 22,000 horses were used
for product delivery. Total UK production was estimated by Bratby & Hinchcliffe
to be almost 300 million dozen half pints (ca. 900 million litres). For comparison, in
1990, government statistics show that almost 18,000 people were employed in the
soft drinks industry (manufacturing, distribution, sales and marketing) producing
6717 million litres of drinks. In 1899, there were 2763 soft drink bottling plants in
operation in the USA.
The industries of the UK, Europe and USA progressed along slightly different
paths owing to the differing circumstances found in those regions, although three
types of beverage were found in each region. The industry in the UK, which was
becoming more industrialised with large factories supplying products to the masses,
progressed along the path of industrial production of soft drinks in returnable bottles
sold through shops. In continental Europe the soda siphon type device (i.e. the
gasogene or seltzogene) became popular for home use. These were used for the
dispensing off of avoured drinks, not just soda water. The common soda siphon
which we would recognise today was patented by Charles Plinth in 1813. However,

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4CARBONATED SOFT DRINKS
he used a stop-cock to dispense the contents and the use of a lever-operated device
was patented by Deleuze and Dutillet in Paris in 1829. The use of a small metal bulb
lled with CO
2to re-charge a siphon of water was patented by Arthur Marescot
in 1874.
In the USA, soda fountain equipment, where drinks were produced in shops for
consumption on site, also became very popular. Some carbonates were consumed
purely as a source of refreshment but many retained their medicinal pedigree to a
greater or lesser extent. The most notable was probably quinine tonic water, which
was consumed in tropical regions as a cure for malaria. Dandelion and burdock was
obviously of herbal origin, and another popular drink in late nineteenth-century
Scotland and in London during the 1890s was Kola Tonic. Kola (or cola) was a nut
from West Africa, which was used by Nigerians as a symbol of hospitality. In 1886,
Dr John S. Pemberton combined cola with coca (an extract from the S. American
coca leaf) to produce his coca-cola ‘brain tonic’ sold in the soda fountain of his
store in Georgia. In 1892, Asa G. Candler took over the business and incorporated
the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta with an aggressive marketing campaign for his
‘nutrient beverage and tonic’. The company granted the rights to bottle the product
under licence. The rst such plant opened in Chattanooga in 1899, followed rapidly
by many more. Around the same time Dr Pepper was launched by R.S. Lazenby in
Waco, Texas (ca. 1888) and Pepsi-Cola was launched at New Bern, North Carolina
by Caleb D. Bradham (ca. 1896, although the name Pepsi-Cola was not coined until
1901).
By the close of the nineteenth century most of the common carbonated soft
drinks of today were already on sale, for example, soda water, ginger beer,
ginger ale, lemonade, orangeade and other citrus drinks, cherryade, quinine tonic
water, bitter lemon, colas, sarsaparilla, root beer, cream soda etc. These would all
have been well known to consumers in the late Victorian era.
There is a difference between the American and British denitions of soda
water. In the USA, soda water is dened simply as carbonated water, but the UK
legislation still requires that soda water must contain a minimum of 550 mg/l
sodium bicarbonate. Interestingly the only other legal compositional standard for
a soft drink in the UK is for tonic water, which currently must contain a minimum
of 57 mg/l quinine (as sulphate).
1.3 Technological development
1.3.1 Carbon dioxide
It had been recognised by many scientists in the early 1700s that the gas produced
by brewery fermentation, combustion of wood and addition of acids to chalk/marble
was one and the same. It was given several names including articial air (Boyle
1685), mephitic air (Brownrigg 1741), xed air (Black 1754), gas acide carbonique
(Lavoisier 1782) and nally gaz oxide de carbon (Fourcroy 1805).

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INTRODUCTION5
The most practical/economic means of commercial production was by the action
of sulphuric acid on marble chippings (known as whiting) or, at a later date, on
sodium bicarbonate. Crushed marble (or chalk or limestone) was cheap and readily
available in large quantities. However, the purity of the marble was critical to the
quality of the CO
2. Impurities (particularly organic ones) would cause noticeable
‘off avours’ in the nished drink. This forced manufacturers to introduce lters
and scrubbers to remove taints. Bubbling the CO
2through olive oil was a com-
monly used method of removing organic taints. The purication of CO
2introduced
complexity and hence cost to the production process. Although more expensive
than marble, sodium bicarbonate could be obtained in commercial quantities at
consistently high purity and was