Carbonated Water: Priestley's Fixed Air from Chalk and Oil of Vitriol, 1772

In 1767 Joseph Priestley hung a bowl of water over a fermenting vat in a Leeds brewery and found it took up the gas; he wrote of the "peculiar satisfaction" of drinking it. In 1772 he published how to do it anywhere: fixed air (carbon dioxide) from chalk and oil of vitriol, led up into an upturned vessel of water and shaken in. It won him the Royal Society's Copley Medal.