David Rosenthal: observation

Transcript context

…Which is funny because it neither contains much kola since the caffeine is actually an extract and it’s just a tiny little drop from the kola seed, and very soon they would strip out almost all the cocaine, so you have a product that for the next 140 years would be called Coca-Cola that contains really not very much coca and really not very much kola. Yes, indeed. They go about getting the new product installed and distributed in drugstore soda fountains around Atlanta. Ben, you were saying a minute ago about, oh, drugstores were this gathering place at the time. Remember I said about bottling technology. If you weren’t selling alcohol, which had natural preservatives, the only way that you could buy and consume a drink that really wasn’t water or milk or something was fresh. That’s how soda fountains come to be installed in these drugstores. They’re selling the patent medicines, many of which are liquids. That’s also how carbonated water comes to the drugstore because mineral water, carbonated water is thought to be a health tonic. So it all mixes together. Then over the years, these morph into social places, thanks in large part to Coca-Cola. Makes total sense. I’m pretty sure what actually happens is Pemberton lets his formula settle, and it’s this thick syrupy thing, brings it down the street to the first drugstore, and that druggist, that proprietor is the one who actually combines that syrup with the carbonated water and makes the choice, which I think could have gone either way. Is it a still or a sparkling beverage to give it that champagne sparkle to create the Coca-Cola that would endure from there?…

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