In a word . . . carbonated

There are many opinion as to what the greatest ever invention was. Views range from the wheel, invented around 3,600 BC by the Mesopotamians (ask Jacob Rees Mogg! Okay, okay, okay. Modern Iraq, Kuwait, parts of Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey). It was first used in making pottery. Then, about 300 years later, it was put on a cart/chariot. Since when the wheel has not looked back. So to speak.

Following that there is the humble but infinitely useful nail, the compass, glass/lenses, paper and gunpowder (thank you China), the printing press, steam engine, electricity, internal combustion engine, the phone, vaccinations, the car, airplane, penicillin (not what it used to be), rockets, nuclear fission, (please, please can we have nuclear fusion any day soon? All that cheap energy), semi conductors (foundation of all electronic devices), the personal computer, the internet.

That is by no means a definitive list of the greats. (Add your own!).

Yet in all the research I conducted I never saw anywhere included one of humanity’s truly great inventions – carbonated water. How dull our taste buds would be without it! How impossible would be hangovers (so I’m told!). How . . . well . . . flat life would be!

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In a Word . . . passport

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And all down to an 18th century English Protestant minister Rev Joseph Priestly who invented soda water by accident in 1769. (What results when carbon dioxide gas is dissolved in water under pressure.)

He published a paper on it titled, ahem, Impregnating Water with Fixed Air. As you do.

Along came German-Swiss watchmaker Johann Jacob Schweppe who took Priestly's invention and manufactured bottled carbonated mineral water. In 1792 he moved to London to develop the Schweppes business there and, in 1799, Augustine Thwaites founded Thwaites' Soda Water in the fair city of Dublin.

It was Thwaites who first used (and patented) the term “soda water” to describe the fizzy drink. That arose from noticing that adding sodium carbonate to water greatly facilitated the absorption of carbon dioxide. Which is where the American term “soda” came from.

Nowadays, however, carbonated water is made by passing pressurised carbon dioxide through water. And no, you green people over there in the corner, carbonated water does not cause global warming, climate change, or March blizzards in Ireland.

Those bubbles harm nothing. The carbon dioxide is always with us. It is just squashed under pressure into water. Cheers!

Carbon, from Latin carbonem, for "a coal, glowing coal, charcoal".

inaword@irishtimes.com