Who made the first soda?

Ask a simple question. Who made the first soda? The answer should be a name, maybe even a brand. But the truth is less neat, and far more interesting.

If you go looking for the “inventor of soda”, you will land on Joseph Priestley. In 1767, he found a way to add fizz to water by exposing it to the gas rising from fermenting beer. The result was carbonated water. No sugar, no flavour, just a sharp, sparkling drink that felt new.

Priestley was not trying to launch a beverage. He was studying air and gases, part of a wave of scientific curiosity in 18th century Europe. The drink he created was more of a laboratory novelty. It was even seen as a possible health tonic. Pleasant, but not quite something you would crave with a bucket of fried chicken.

So does that make him the man behind the first soda? Only if you are willing to accept soda in its plainest form.

The story shifts when Johann Jacob Schweppe enters the picture. In 1783, he took Priestley’s idea and did something more practical with it. He developed a system to produce carbonated water consistently and at scale. More importantly, he bottled it and sold it. His company, Schweppes, turned fizzy water into a product people could actually buy.

Now the question becomes more interesting. Is the first soda the one that was discovered, or the one that was sold?

Even then, we are still not talking about what most of us recognise as soda today. There was no sweetness yet, no cola, no orange, no lemon. That part of the story unfolds in the 1800s, when pharmacists began mixing flavoured syrups into carbonated water. These early blends were marketed as remedies. They promised relief from headaches, fatigue, even digestive troubles.

Somewhere between medicine and indulgence, soda found its identity.

The modern soft drink, the one that comes chilled and sugary, is really the result of that second wave. Priestley gave it fizz. Schweppe gave it form. Pharmacists gave it flavour.

So who made the first soda?

If you mean the first fizzy water, the credit goes to Joseph Priestley. If you mean the first version you could buy and drink, Johann Jacob Schweppe makes a strong claim. If you are thinking of the sweet, flavoured drink that fills store shelves today, then it was not one person at all, but a slow build of ideas across decades.

That familiar hiss when you open a bottle carries all of that history. A scientist’s experiment, a watchmaker’s business instinct, and a pharmacist’s flair for flavour, all packed into a single sip.

Sources:

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Joseph Priestley”
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Johann Jacob Schweppe”
• Royal Society of Chemistry, “The history of carbonated water”
• Smithsonian Magazine, “The rise of soda fountains”