In 1783, a Swiss jeweller named Johann Jacob Schweppe worked out how to pump carbon dioxide into plain water on a large scale. The result was a fizzy drink that tasted oddly refreshing and felt like nothing else of the time. He started bottling it in Geneva and selling it as a “health drink.”
A few years later he moved to London, where his bottled sparkling water became a hit at the royal court. King William IV gave Schweppes a royal warrant in 1836, which means the king officially endorsed the drink. The company is still in business today, more than 240 years after that first fizz - older than the United States is.
Other fizzy drinks followed. Tonic water (also a Schweppes invention) came along in the 1800s as a malaria treatment, and Coca-Cola joined the party a full century after Schweppes. So the next time you hear a bottle of bubbles open with a hiss, remember: that hiss has been entertaining humans for over two centuries.
