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@LiraNunaHe was sponsored by World of Warships previously, but hopefully this is the start of a long running relationship between he and Nord. He’s absolutely earned it.
A word of advice, it looked like you were trying to make a Sidecar cocktail in the cold-opening of this video. However, the drink would be much improved, if you had used VS Cognac { I prefer Courvoisier or Hennessy } Cointreau Triple-Sec, and freshly-squeezed lemon juice. The Sidecar was invented in the inter-bellum era { the epoch between the two World Wars } at Harry's New York Bar in Paris { the same bar where the Bloody Mary was invented, a favorite bar haunt of Ernest Hemingway, and George Gershwin wrote "An American in Paris" on an old out-of-tune piano in the bar's basement } , and so named because it was the favored drink of a French Army officer who often was driven to the bar riding in the sidecar of a motorbike driven by his valet. Nice video, have a wonderful day sir!
Surprised that you didn't mention that until the early 20th century most soda siphons weren't user refillable, and empties would be picked up and replaced ala milk man. These services still exist in Seattle and new york
Lol, I was about to comment on remembering the "seltzer truck" delivering siphons to more "upscale" households in NYC during my misspent youth in the '70s. Sometimes, my fellow street urchins (NEVER me, of course, lol) would liberate a few in more temperate days, resulting in "3 stooges battles" in Central Park... ahhhh, the joys of youth!
@@chapps80 here in Argentina if you ask old people they will always tell you they know some kid that placed the sifón and exploded and got badly injured or sadly got a cut in the yugular vein and died, very dangerous until they started using the plastic shirts.
If you're an avid fan and reader of Sherlock Holmes, you may remember the Gasogene that occupied a place of honor in the bar at 221B Baker Street. Consisting of two glass spheres stacked on top of each other, the spheres covered by a reinforcing mesh of metal, the Gasogene used a reaction of Sodium Bicarbonate and tartaric acid to carbonate water drunk by the Great Detective and his faithful Chronicler. 🧐🧐🙂
You could buy a powder in France which you can mix with water that uses that, or a similar reaction. It has a citrus taste and makes a sour slightly bitter sweet citrusy drink. I suspect it's only popular with very old people. 😀
@@RegebroRepairs 😳🤣😛. I suspect a dash of brandy or whiskey would make that more palatable. But, a dash of brandy or whiskey makes most beverages more palatable...🙂😉
@@RegebroRepairs That actually sounds pretty good, does it have a name I'm hoping I can find some in the local import shops and before you judge my paltry 30 winters I haven't had a soda in 6 years.
Interesting fact: Sparklets were used by thousands and thousands of model builders to propel small airplanes. There were tiny piston engines made which used the pressurised gas to run the propeller. Each sparkelts gave you several seconds of flying time :)
I'll bet only a small percentage of whipped cream dispensers are used to make whipped cream. They are sold at convenience stores along with nitrous oxide cartridges and balloons for potentially dangerous inhalation.
@@theodorekorehonen yes and you need to be careful using them in other ways. my brother in law is an addict, he used whatever he could get his hands on. then he got clean except for whippets or however its spelled. he would sit in his room doing them all day. he is now like one of the homeless people you see talking to a lamp pole with urine covered jeans. he was a smart guy too, it's really sad and 100% due to nitrous. just like anything else there needs to be moderation.
I imagine those who questioned the health benefits of radium were called "conspiracy theorists" - but perhaps only our 21st century society is THAT hubristic.
My great-great-grandfather owned a soda bottling company in a medium sized town until WWII. I remember some of his bottles gathering dust in the attic, although none were of this fancy variety as they were filled with water and carbonated in the factory, not by an attached canister.
I love your intro jokes. The gas mask intro is my favorite followed by the tobacco pipe. Im glad to see you taking sponsors. Folks don't realize how much work it takes to produce content like this..... and you absolutely deserve to be paid well for it 👍
12:20 Oh yeah I instantly recognized those CO₂ bulbs from their modern descendants. Not only do I have a few old friends who've used them in pellet pistols as you mention, but my brother has used them quite a bit in homebrewing - If you're making a big batch of ale or cider for barbecue season or for a party, it's easier and safer to take the flat brew, halt its fermentation, put it in a keg, and add CO₂ artificially than it is to have it carbonate itself by doing a precise final amount of fermentation in sealed bottles. To that end, modern CO₂ capsules are a readily available source of CO₂ gas from which a hobbyist can carbonate their keg.
If you're making smaller amounts (I have only done it making homemade soda pop) I have found that plastic bottles work great. When the bottles become firm wait two or three days and then put them in the fridge.
@@Skorpychan The essence of comedy is the subversion of expectations, and what thrilled me such to exultantly exclaim in all capitals was the juxtaposition of the cheap bottom shelf squeeze bulb lemon juice with the precocious poshness of the presenter and his pretty presentable presents. Trust I’ve made many a cocktail with the old reliable squeeze bulb, it just tickled me to see it so out of place.
@@Skorpychan they're just lousy to use in cocktails because they're watered-down lemon juice with a weird taste and a really weak lemon flavour. It's really not the same as just squeezing some actual juice out of a lemon. To be fair, I use them too sometimes, but it's the drinking equivalent of cooking up a box of mac & cheese for dinner and eating it out of the pot, lol
My grandfather's shop used to sell soda syphons, but they weren't rechargeable by the customer. Instead there was a substantial deposit on the bottle which was redeemed when it was returned for sending back to the supplier. As a child I remember being amazed by the fizzy water being dispensed at the push of a lever, and sometimes even had a sip of my grandfather's whisky and soda.
That's my memory, too (England, 1960's). It was possible to buy reusable syphons that used cartridges, but less frequent users (like our family) would buy a non-refillable one. The deposit was many times the cost of the contents. I vaguely remember the price being something like 11 or 12 shillings, of which 10 shillings was the deposit.
Except Eastern Europe where syphons were all popular either the variant that was refilled and carbonated at a local shop or the auto-syphon where you were carbonating at home, the later being more expensive and less popular. In my area they were popular till the early 2000's, now they are more of a novelty item sold to persons wanting a traditional Wine Spritzer or home made juices. To remember that taste I bought a Soda Stream machine and it's has the same taste.
In my home city of Lodz, Poland until early 2000 we had a shop where you can refill such siphons. They sold also flavoured carbonated water in bottles with ceramic stoppers. And siphons with co2 cartridges we have metal ones.
I'm originally from Hungary and grew up drinking "szörp" (coming from the word syrup of course). I also have a soda stream machine. BIG difference between the two! Old fashioned soda siphon's bubbles are large and just like soda pop. Soda stream on the other hand has tiny bubbles. No matter what we do it never will be as good as the old soda siphons.
Huh. I never knew how those actually worked. I assumed the spray was just exaggerated in cartoons! And it ALSO neatly explains the origin of those little CO2 cartridges I got for my emergency tyre inflator. Which looks a lot like the top of a soda siphon.
I remember as a child wondering why so many houses had these siphons whose main use, at least in movies, was spraying people with water. I had wondered how they were charged.
You do all this without a prompter? Impressive stuff dude! Also I'm wondering if a modern whip cream charger would work in one of those... Kinda want one now.
Cream Whipper cartridges will work in a soda siphon, but I don't know what results you would get with water. Most people who used cream whipper cartridges in soda siphons left out the water, and used the siphon as a way to use N2O internally(by inhalation).
People will think I am nuts for telling this story, but watching this video remined me of my experiences from my tour of duty to England back in the late '70's. I had a room mate who was (and still is, I assume) several years younger than myself who introduced me to the world of Nitrous Oxide. We inhaled it through the very type of siphon bottle the host of this video describes. We had no liquid in the bottle, but we used the Sparklet cartridges that we obtained from the apothecary (drug store). Wild times, those were!
You didn't inhale the gas from Sparklet cartridges (which are Carbon Dioxide and a really bad idea!) but rather the ones (that look just like the Sparklets) for making whipped cream with a similar dispenser. Those are Nitrous Oxide - which is also known as "laughing gas" and was widely used as a dental anaesthetic back in the day. Here in Canada, we called that "doing whippets" because it's the same effect as inhaling the gas from a dairy-case whip cream can - which you do WITHOUT inverting the can like you would to get whipped cream!
I grew up watching Looney Tunes and they used to emulate and pay homage to the older slapstick bits that came before them, so I always wondered how these things worked. Your videos never disappoint, man. Excellent work!
One of my favorite channels, thanks for many interesting insights. One small detail: Acapnia (which-to my knowledge- is never seen in human in vivo physiology) would probably be a rather rapid fatal condition as even a moderate hypocapnia -depending on the individual's capacity to countercompensate pH shifts etc- can have quite dramatic consequences. Thanks again and looking forward to your next episode!
I sure do enjoy this channel. I just subscribed. No-one else covers the history of so many everyday objects from the past as Gilles does. Keep up the good work!
As a kid I wanted to buy a soda siphon at a garage sale for a dime. My mom said absolutely not. Her parents owned stores, and it seems that these things would explode, throwing glass shrapnel. The wire screen was an attempt to minimize injury and death.
That took me back. In the 60s/70s we would visit my aunt and uncle who were a bit more sophisticated in their tastes than my family - or maybe they just liked gadgets. They had various mysterious things - a coffee percolator for instance, And a soda siphon - which fascinated me. I'd never seen one anywhere before.
In Italy at least, a similar type of CO2 siphon, was used to push whipped cream out of a bottle where the ingredients were mixed. I remember our winter Sundays returning from church, us children spending our pocket money at the milk shop, to get a delicious cone of whipped cream from the “soda bottle” topped with cinnamon powder!😋 Didn’t you have the same in Canada, because it’s not mentioned in the video?
For whipped cream nitrous oxide is used instead of carbon dioxide. Yes, the same stuff dentists sometimes still use to reduce pain and anxiety. The little pressurized cartridges look very similar.
Nicely done. There’s been a rise in popularity of home products like the Soda Stream for those wanting to re-use their own bottles. Big Clive has amusingly tried to carbonate all sorts of things on his channel.
my parents bought one and its such a ridiculously low quality novelty product, now i know what these traditional devices are called and seeing how much cheaper they are than a soda stream really makes you realize how much of our society has been compromised by hostile marketing firms
@@Cheesemonk3hI've had two SodaStreams over many years, one was the classic, cheap plastic apparatus and it lasted years and years without any problems whatsoever. I left it behind when moving and it probably still works. I now have a SodaStream Crystal from 2017 and it lasted seven years so far and also works without issues. So those things are surprisingly sturdy.
Our Own Devices produces content better than anything the History Channel typically outputs today. Thank you for your continued efforts on being super cool.
Thank you for this video. The information, as you called surprising is just that. There really is a surprising history of the carbonated water world. And you don't use a teleprompter, that's impressive.
We still use siphons for soda water here in Argentina! In my home town of 7k people there's 2 or 3 small companies run by a guy we call 'el sodero' (the soda man) they pick up empties and leave fresh crates of siphons to whoever Is subscribed to their route. They also work as drinks and ice distributors for the local shops. We also have reusable glass and plastic coca cola bottles, they're cheaper that way :)
In the USSR and Russia soda syphons became relatively widespread household item (and, of course, a symbol of bürger prestige, and sometimes an envy of neighborhood kids, or maybe a tool of getting in their good graces) in the mid-to-late 1950s, and maintained that position until the mid-1990s. Of course soda/Selters water wasn't unknown before that too. Having a siphon (either suspiciously resembling that pre-WW2 English one, or that space-age-design, or, of course, penguin-shaped since mid-1960 and up until the end of the century) was relatively common, especially in bigger cities as well as “closed” (secret) towns, where restricted interaction with the outside world was compensated by wages, good schools and hospitals, homogeneous society of mostly well-educated and well-behaved people, and higher tier of provisioning. The main problem were, of course, the chargers, the local equivalent of Sparklets. First, sometimes one could stumble upon the damn things in most unusual locations and circumstances; for example, a local shop in a remote village in Eastern Kazakhsan could get two crateloads of those for whatever reason, while syphon owners in Moscow, Leningrad, Ufa, or Irkutsk had no clues on where to get the dioxide to sparkle up their New Year table without resorting to chains of connections that led to some obscure military factory or to somebody pilfering some big restaurant supplies. Second, the charges were dangerous. Production quality varied, and not once I heard horror stories, not all of which were made-up adult deterrents for little boys fascinated by mysterious vessel on top of a kitchen shelf (and the very idea of homemade soda), about the charges exploding because of bad production quality, sending thick metal shrapnel everywhere instead of bubbling up water. Those indeed held certain ground because in the late 1980s I myself witnessed ladies manning milkshake and pop at so-called “ice cream cafes” wrapping chargers (that were kept as spares for the not uncommon occasion of running out of a gas in a big tank) in several layers of towel - and not because it was that hard to screw on the charger holder... There was a penguin syphon in my family too, but barely two times in several decades of its existence it was used for intended purpose. Once it was in 1989, and another in 1994. Now all these syphons are mostly useless because all the rubber gaskets have dried out and no all modern replacements fit, and modern equivalents, as well as much more reliable chargers, are readily available at least online with quick delivery.
I can already see the opening bit of your "Whip-It!" cream-charger vid - it's going to be epic. (why don't home carbonation products look as cool as those syphons?)
Man, it's unreal that you mention slapstick comedy like The Three Stooges. As soon as I layed eyes on that it brought back memories of seeing it used in that show. Then when you mentioned it I was like ohh wow, yeah spot on!
I'm glad that cartoons have kept it alive as a prop. All I have to do is bark "Hey, Squidward!" real quickly and a whole new generation will probably have an image in their mind's eye.
Here in Argentina we still have the service on soda syphons (sifón in spanish) to your home by private companies than also sell you bottled water ( in barrels of 15 or 20 litres) Normally, the syphons carry 1 liter, but some restaurants or bars (old school ones) have even little syphons of 500 ml (half a litre) ideal for your Moscato wine or Vermout👌
We got the kids a Soda Stream dispenser for Christmas this year, possibly the most used gift they've ever received. Zero calories and they think they're getting a treat!
Back in the day some local dairies would offer sparkling water in pre-charged dispensing bottles delivered with your milk on the doorstep in the early morning.
Thank you Gilles for another fascinating rendition. Life would be so much less zesty without rabbit holes imho. I particularly enjoyed the illustration of Paris in 1900 since I lived there from 1956-60. Lots more green space back then!
While I'm not a physician, I remember that the mixture of 5% CO2 and 95% of O2 was administered (together with other measures) to victims of methanol poisoning as late as in '70s (tat is, "from what I learned back then"), and the reason for CO2 in it was it stimulates the breathing reflex (thus making the patient to ventilate faster, which would rise the blood oxygen level which was crucial for preventing damage to the optical nerve by formaldehyde, which was product of methanol metabolism). Also, the blackout that affect some free-divers WHILE "GOING UP" is caused by the fact that "at depth" more oxygen from air in the lungs gets pushed to the bloodstream (absorbed by it) and this prevents the C)2 build-up, which in turn "mutes" the "oxygen starvation" which would normally force the person to breath - but when he or she is surfacing there's a drop of the pressure, so whatever little of oxygen remains in lungs no longer gets absorbed by blood, which leads to blackout - and often to subsequent drowning.
I grew up with the identical model to that in your video, and had myself many drinks made with Rose's lime juice and that form of soda. Thank you for another well researched, professionally presented video. Enjoyed iy a lot.
My grandma had one of these in her many shelves and boxes full of antique junk. I used to play with the mechanism at the top as a kid and I knew it came from an old home bar, but I never understood exactly how it worked. This was only 20 years ago, I wonder how old the siphon actually was. It didn’t have metal mesh around it, just extremely thick glass.
And as James Burke told us in Connections the discovery of how to carbonate water was just what was needed to make bitter quinine water (a treatment for malaria) not only palatable but downright delicious. Add a splash of gin to this newfangled "tonic water" as it was called and people were positively queuing up to take their medicine. They still are ;)
Cool episode, now I want a seltzer bottle like that. The use of the Radium bulb was another interesting example of casual use of radioactive materials through ignorance. I always enjoy your episodes that pertain to such topics, It would be great if you did an episode on the medical use of the Thorium X-ray contrast Thorotrast and it’s consequences.
Another video full of interesting discoveries! I used to think that the earliest sodas siphons must have used chemically generated carbonation (akin to Priestley's discovery) within the bottle of the siphon!
FYI: Soda Syphons are still sold today. Commonly styled and manufactured similar to 100 years ago. And, yes the 8g "sparklet" cartridges are still widely available.
i use a soda syphon all the time, soda alone is pretty good but i often drink it with some vermouth, 1 finger of cinzano or gancia and 3 to 4 of soda, refreshing and delicious, and with those proportions you dont feel the alcohol effects just the nice vermouth taste. but we use drago syphons made of steel instead of glass and its charged with big 350g co2 drago cylinders that i get refilled every few months for cheap.
You missed the most important use of seltzer bottles, which is what I or we used to call them back in Brooklyn decades ago: they made fantastic water guns! At least I thought so, though I might have thought differently if I had dropped one. Our home delivered seltzer bottles didn't have the protective metal mesh. 😂 (Note the seltzer tears in the emoji.)
I mean, by the looks of it the corkscrew product is basically a small wasp knife (first heard about them from sci-fi TTRPG Eclipse Phase, but apparently they're an actual thing mainly used for underwater fighting against humans or animals [presumably mostly sharks?]) with a long syringe needle instead of a full blade or shorter needle, what a frightening device to consider folks buying them as a novelty and leaving them lying around without the care and security a dangerous weapon should receive. Though I suppose the same goes for a number of power and hand tools and such... I guess a lot of tools are potentially very lethal if somebody gets stabbed with them, now that I think about it. Also, using a whole CO2 cartridge (though presumably a small one) to remove a bottle cork in a slightly flashier, more frightening way (to intimidate dinner guests?) seems... wasteful? I guess if they're easy to reload and trigger, they may be the easiest way for a person with very weak/arthritic hands to open a wine bottle? Still seems kind of excessive, you'd think a battery-powered corkscrew would be easier, though I guess these devices (and their ammunition) could be stored in a drawer without maintenance for a long time and still be good unlike a battery, and when they were first marketed there wasn't the tech for a convenient battery-powered power corkscrew...
I've always wondered if the mesh covering was a safety feature to prevent broken glass being thrown about in case to glass vessel broke under pressure, was decorative, or both.
Sparklet bulbs were used in the aeromodelling world to power tiny CO2 engines for small free flight models. The cylinder is finned not for cooling but for warming instead, as the expanding gas can freeze the engine solid as it runs.
I have a Syphon manufactured by British Syphon Co limited that I got from my grandmother many years ago which is branded "W. Hay and sons" 1929 (an old soft drink company from Aberdeen in Scotland) on the metal valve/nozzle the glass vessel is acid etched with wm Corry and co from Belfast, presumably the original vessel broke at some point and got substituted. Sadly the seals have long since perished but not sure I'd want to pressurize it anyway, it seems you had to do so through the nozzle as there is no port to screw on a gas canister and it only has one dip tube.. made from glass.
Just chiming in to say I own a refillable one and it's saved me hundreds of dollars since I bought it, in a country where that's actually multiple minimum wages. More people should own them
As i got older in life, bubbly water became my primary hydration drink. Room temp is fine. I just buy in bottles as it's fairly cheap in bulk and soda syphons and cartridges are quite expensive here. In my childhood in Poland, we used to have a syphon, a metal one, which is safer than glass ones. anyway, prefer not to have to filter tapwater and carbonate. cheaper and easier to buy ready.
Well, I just found out something I didn't know I needed. I want the light blue and red Sparklets soda bottles shown at 17:42. Those are indeed futuristic and cool looking.
I've had alot of fun with these devices, the bottles were available very cheap a while ago, it was always the cartridge screw device that was hard to find. However, CO2 is not the best gas thats available in the same "8g" canisters. The "finest of all airs"
i miss soda delivery. that and milk were coming to an end when i was a kid... helped it on its way as we kid might swipe them and use tgo squit each other every now and then
The wife has a device (Made in Austria) that you put cream in, attach the sparklet, and voila whipped cream pressurized. It is a fairly modern device purchased new in the 2000’s Very similar to the soda device scaled for a pint of cream. Aluminum tank. Love your show
It is very interesting, how people differently know the technical history due to the language differences and geographical distance, which separates us from the historical sources. In Hungary, it is taugth in schools that the soda syphon and the mass produced carbonated water were invented by Jedlik Ányos (1800-1895) in 1826. …and yes: there is a popular alcoholic beverage in Hungary, the so-called "fröccs" (spritzer in English), also invented by Jedlik Ányos: carbonated water and wine (strictly without ice). - It simply not works with carbonated mineral water. Carbonated water from tap water is the best. (Believe me, I tried it. Fortunately drinking tap water is safe in Hungary.) The soda and the whipping syphon are a common household equipment in Hungary: basically every household have at least one piece of each. All of them - but at least most of them - made of metal instead of glass. Unfortunatelly, the distribution of the returnable 8g sparklet cartridge was ended in March 2018. But still there are small shops in Hungary, where you can get filled your soda syphon. - This system uses an another type of soda syphon, which is simpler, and cannot accept sparklet cartridge. This syphon made of glass in the old times - in the 90's I have saw some -, but today it is made of transparent plastic, with the logo of the soda shop. Because it is returnable.
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@LiraNunaHe was sponsored by World of Warships previously, but hopefully this is the start of a long running relationship between he and Nord. He’s absolutely earned it.
A word of advice, it looked like you were trying to make a Sidecar cocktail in the cold-opening of this video. However, the drink would be much improved, if you had used VS Cognac { I prefer Courvoisier or Hennessy } Cointreau Triple-Sec, and freshly-squeezed lemon juice. The Sidecar was invented in the inter-bellum era { the epoch between the two World Wars } at Harry's New York Bar in Paris { the same bar where the Bloody Mary was invented, a favorite bar haunt of Ernest Hemingway, and George Gershwin wrote "An American in Paris" on an old out-of-tune piano in the bar's basement } , and so named because it was the favored drink of a French Army officer who often was driven to the bar riding in the sidecar of a motorbike driven by his valet. Nice video, have a wonderful day sir!
"Must leave enough brandy for the video" he muttered to himself. "Half an inch is plenty" he added, as he started on his 8th sidecar of the evening.
Surprised that you didn't mention that until the early 20th century most soda siphons weren't user refillable, and empties would be picked up and replaced ala milk man. These services still exist in Seattle and new york
Lol, I was about to comment on remembering the "seltzer truck" delivering siphons to more "upscale" households in NYC during my misspent youth in the '70s. Sometimes, my fellow street urchins (NEVER me, of course, lol) would liberate a few in more temperate days, resulting in "3 stooges battles" in Central Park... ahhhh, the joys of youth!
In Buenos Aires, Argentina is still really common to have that service. You can buy, disposable siphons on the supermarket.
SF Bay Area too.
We have a saying in Hungarian "beats it like a soda vender his horse" 😢
@@chapps80 here in Argentina if you ask old people they will always tell you they know some kid that placed the sifón and exploded and got badly injured or sadly got a cut in the yugular vein and died, very dangerous until they started using the plastic shirts.
If you're an avid fan and reader of Sherlock Holmes, you may remember the Gasogene that occupied a place of honor in the bar at 221B Baker Street. Consisting of two glass spheres stacked on top of each other, the spheres covered by a reinforcing mesh of metal, the Gasogene used a reaction of Sodium Bicarbonate and tartaric acid to carbonate water drunk by the Great Detective and his faithful Chronicler. 🧐🧐🙂
You could buy a powder in France which you can mix with water that uses that, or a similar reaction. It has a citrus taste and makes a sour slightly bitter sweet citrusy drink. I suspect it's only popular with very old people. 😀
@@RegebroRepairs 😳🤣😛. I suspect a dash of brandy or whiskey would make that more palatable. But, a dash of brandy or whiskey makes most beverages more palatable...🙂😉
@@User_Un_Friendly You may have a point, I didn't try that.
@@RegebroRepairs That actually sounds pretty good, does it have a name I'm hoping I can find some in the local import shops and before you judge my paltry 30 winters I haven't had a soda in 6 years.
@@hrvstmn31 I forgot, sorry...
Interesting fact: Sparklets were used by thousands and thousands of model builders to propel small airplanes. There were tiny piston engines made which used the pressurised gas to run the propeller. Each sparkelts gave you several seconds of flying time :)
Thats actually really cool
It's also the same shaped cartridge used to hold nitrous for making whipped cream. Many whipped cream makers look very similar to this soda siphon.
I'll bet only a small percentage of whipped cream dispensers are used to make whipped cream. They are sold at convenience stores along with nitrous oxide cartridges and balloons for potentially dangerous inhalation.
You can make whipped cream with those??? (just kidding)
@@theodorekorehonen yes and you need to be careful using them in other ways.
my brother in law is an addict, he used whatever he could get his hands on. then he got clean except for whippets or however its spelled. he would sit in his room doing them all day. he is now like one of the homeless people you see talking to a lamp pole with urine covered jeans. he was a smart guy too, it's really sad and 100% due to nitrous. just like anything else there needs to be moderation.
@@FINNIUSORION Yes it's an extraordinarily efficient means of destroying brain cells
16:40
"A constant supply of radioactive water".
It's completely nuts that this was ever seen as "healthy".
Radioactive health products are back but now they're advertised as protecting against 5G, the irony literally kills.
I can't wait to see what in 30 or 40 years we'll see that way about the 2020s
And that's not a conspiracy minded anti-vax dig just to be clear
I imagine those who questioned the health benefits of radium were called "conspiracy theorists" - but perhaps only our 21st century society is THAT hubristic.
Kerosene and turpentine were also "medicinal" for quite a while.
I am SO glad people learned better about those before I came along.
My great-great-grandfather owned a soda bottling company in a medium sized town until WWII. I remember some of his bottles gathering dust in the attic, although none were of this fancy variety as they were filled with water and carbonated in the factory, not by an attached canister.
My family thought they were so posh in the late 60's and early 70's when using a soda syphon bottle on their hostess trolley for drinks after dinner 😂
Oh man great choice, I imagine a lot of people like me saw these in movies and such growing up and had no idea what they were!
Tom and Jerry cartoons, mostly.
@@Skorpychan❤
I love your intro jokes. The gas mask intro is my favorite followed by the tobacco pipe.
Im glad to see you taking sponsors. Folks don't realize how much work it takes to produce content like this..... and you absolutely deserve to be paid well for it 👍
12:20 Oh yeah I instantly recognized those CO₂ bulbs from their modern descendants. Not only do I have a few old friends who've used them in pellet pistols as you mention, but my brother has used them quite a bit in homebrewing - If you're making a big batch of ale or cider for barbecue season or for a party, it's easier and safer to take the flat brew, halt its fermentation, put it in a keg, and add CO₂ artificially than it is to have it carbonate itself by doing a precise final amount of fermentation in sealed bottles. To that end, modern CO₂ capsules are a readily available source of CO₂ gas from which a hobbyist can carbonate their keg.
If you're making smaller amounts (I have only done it making homemade soda pop) I have found that plastic bottles work great. When the bottles become firm wait two or three days and then put them in the fridge.
THE SQUEEZE BULB LEMON I'm dead y'all
Yeah, ew
You've not encountered lemon juice in plastic squeezy lemons before?
@@Skorpychan The essence of comedy is the subversion of expectations, and what thrilled me such to exultantly exclaim in all capitals was the juxtaposition of the cheap bottom shelf squeeze bulb lemon juice with the precocious poshness of the presenter and his pretty presentable presents. Trust I’ve made many a cocktail with the old reliable squeeze bulb, it just tickled me to see it so out of place.
Standards are dropping.
@@Skorpychan they're just lousy to use in cocktails because they're watered-down lemon juice with a weird taste and a really weak lemon flavour. It's really not the same as just squeezing some actual juice out of a lemon.
To be fair, I use them too sometimes, but it's the drinking equivalent of cooking up a box of mac & cheese for dinner and eating it out of the pot, lol
My grandfather's shop used to sell soda syphons, but they weren't rechargeable by the customer. Instead there was a substantial deposit on the bottle which was redeemed when it was returned for sending back to the supplier. As a child I remember being amazed by the fizzy water being dispensed at the push of a lever, and sometimes even had a sip of my grandfather's whisky and soda.
That's my memory, too (England, 1960's). It was possible to buy reusable syphons that used cartridges, but less frequent users (like our family) would buy a non-refillable one. The deposit was many times the cost of the contents. I vaguely remember the price being something like 11 or 12 shillings, of which 10 shillings was the deposit.
Growing up in the 1960s and 70s we had a Sparklets soda siphon, being allowed fizzy water was an occasional treat.
Here in Argentina soda syphons are still very popular and common. Local producers deliver boxes of them every month with a subscription fee.
Except Eastern Europe where syphons were all popular either the variant that was refilled and carbonated at a local shop or the auto-syphon where you were carbonating at home, the later being more expensive and less popular. In my area they were popular till the early 2000's, now they are more of a novelty item sold to persons wanting a traditional Wine Spritzer or home made juices. To remember that taste I bought a Soda Stream machine and it's has the same taste.
damn thanks for the soda stream tip
In my home city of Lodz, Poland until early 2000 we had a shop where you can refill such siphons. They sold also flavoured carbonated water in bottles with ceramic stoppers. And siphons with co2 cartridges we have metal ones.
I'm originally from Hungary and grew up drinking "szörp" (coming from the word syrup of course). I also have a soda stream machine. BIG difference between the two! Old fashioned soda siphon's bubbles are large and just like soda pop. Soda stream on the other hand has tiny bubbles. No matter what we do it never will be as good as the old soda siphons.
Huh. I never knew how those actually worked. I assumed the spray was just exaggerated in cartoons!
And it ALSO neatly explains the origin of those little CO2 cartridges I got for my emergency tyre inflator. Which looks a lot like the top of a soda siphon.
One of the most well-dressed channels on RUclips, I would say.
Yes, and The History Guy.
He has no pants on
theReportOfTheWeek is the implied number 1 of course
@@daleolson3506yes both of them :D
crap, sorry, neither of them
Siphons were in widespread use in Eastern Europe until the early 90's when bottled soda became ubiquitous.
Yup, still remember ours.
I remember as a child wondering why so many houses had these siphons whose main use, at least in movies, was spraying people with water. I had wondered how they were charged.
Loving these intros Gilles, headed for 100k . Well deserved. If you visit the southern uk, i owe you a pint :)
(note, not valid for pints of spirits, altho negotiable)
I had a Crossmann CO2 pistol as a kid. I also carry a CO2 inflator when bicycling, they use a very similar cartridge except the "neck" is threaded.
You do all this without a prompter? Impressive stuff dude!
Also I'm wondering if a modern whip cream charger would work in one of those... Kinda want one now.
Perhaps you could make your own Nitro Pepsi.
Cream Whipper cartridges will work in a soda siphon, but I don't know what results you would get with water.
Most people who used cream whipper cartridges in soda siphons left out the water, and used the siphon as a way to use N2O internally(by inhalation).
@@m.k.8158 Oh wow yeah I guess that'd be a convenient way to dose whippets as well... Lol
People will think I am nuts for telling this story, but watching this video remined me of my experiences from my tour of duty to England back in the late '70's. I had a room mate who was (and still is, I assume) several years younger than myself who introduced me to the world of Nitrous Oxide. We inhaled it through the very type of siphon bottle the host of this video describes. We had no liquid in the bottle, but we used the Sparklet cartridges that we obtained from the apothecary (drug store). Wild times, those were!
Thank you for your service 😉
WaWaWaWaWaWaWaWaWaWa THUD...
You didn't inhale the gas from Sparklet cartridges (which are Carbon Dioxide and a really bad idea!) but rather the ones (that look just like the Sparklets) for making whipped cream with a similar dispenser. Those are Nitrous Oxide - which is also known as "laughing gas" and was widely used as a dental anaesthetic back in the day. Here in Canada, we called that "doing whippets" because it's the same effect as inhaling the gas from a dairy-case whip cream can - which you do WITHOUT inverting the can like you would to get whipped cream!
It's also an extraordinarily efficient means of systematically destroying brain cells.
Ah, squandered youth.
But what if I just want the whipped cream? @@arnehermann3417
I grew up watching Looney Tunes and they used to emulate and pay homage to the older slapstick bits that came before them, so I always wondered how these things worked. Your videos never disappoint, man. Excellent work!
I have one of these as a décor piece! Almost identical looking but not as nice condition. Looks quite old.
Great video!
One of my favorite channels, thanks for many interesting insights. One small detail: Acapnia (which-to my knowledge- is never seen in human in vivo physiology) would probably be a rather rapid fatal condition as even a moderate hypocapnia -depending on the individual's capacity to countercompensate pH shifts etc- can have quite dramatic consequences. Thanks again and looking forward to your next episode!
I sure do enjoy this channel. I just subscribed. No-one else covers the history of so many everyday objects from the past as Gilles does. Keep up the good work!
As a kid I wanted to buy a soda siphon at a garage sale for a dime. My mom said absolutely not. Her parents owned stores, and it seems that these things would explode, throwing glass shrapnel. The wire screen was an attempt to minimize injury and death.
That took me back. In the 60s/70s we would visit my aunt and uncle who were a bit more sophisticated in their tastes than my family - or maybe they just liked gadgets. They had various mysterious things - a coffee percolator for instance, And a soda siphon - which fascinated me. I'd never seen one anywhere before.
In Italy at least, a similar type of CO2 siphon, was used to push whipped cream out of a bottle where the ingredients were mixed. I remember our winter Sundays returning from church, us children spending our pocket money at the milk shop, to get a delicious cone of whipped cream from the “soda bottle” topped with cinnamon powder!😋 Didn’t you have the same in Canada, because it’s not mentioned in the video?
Those did NOT use CO2, the whipped cream units used N2O instead.
CO2 would make terrible whipped cream(in fact, it would likely curdle the cream).
For whipped cream nitrous oxide is used instead of carbon dioxide. Yes, the same stuff dentists sometimes still use to reduce pain and anxiety. The little pressurized cartridges look very similar.
Nicely done. There’s been a rise in popularity of home products like the Soda Stream for those wanting to re-use their own bottles. Big Clive has amusingly tried to carbonate all sorts of things on his channel.
my parents bought one and its such a ridiculously low quality novelty product, now i know what these traditional devices are called and seeing how much cheaper they are than a soda stream really makes you realize how much of our society has been compromised by hostile marketing firms
@@Cheesemonk3hI've had two SodaStreams over many years, one was the classic, cheap plastic apparatus and it lasted years and years without any problems whatsoever. I left it behind when moving and it probably still works.
I now have a SodaStream Crystal from 2017 and it lasted seven years so far and also works without issues.
So those things are surprisingly sturdy.
I'm fascinated by carbonated milk. Never had it though.
@@Scott_From_Maine Big Clive carbonated whiskey as well. Some things just turn into foam when you open the bottle.
@@Cheesemonk3hI dont know if you open your soda stream with pliers or what, but mine is still going after 5 years of daily use
Our Own Devices produces content better than anything the History Channel typically outputs today. Thank you for your continued efforts on being super cool.
Thank you for this video.
The information, as you called surprising is just that. There really is a surprising history of the carbonated water world.
And you don't use a teleprompter, that's impressive.
We still use siphons for soda water here in Argentina! In my home town of 7k people there's 2 or 3 small companies run by a guy we call 'el sodero' (the soda man) they pick up empties and leave fresh crates of siphons to whoever Is subscribed to their route. They also work as drinks and ice distributors for the local shops. We also have reusable glass and plastic coca cola bottles, they're cheaper that way :)
I remember my dad’s siphons at his home bar from the early 60s. And, lemon and lime squeeze bulbs, too! Thanks!
I remember soda siphons being available at most English bars. We used to liberate them for future soda siphon fights, when we got bored.
In the USSR and Russia soda syphons became relatively widespread household item (and, of course, a symbol of bürger prestige, and sometimes an envy of neighborhood kids, or maybe a tool of getting in their good graces) in the mid-to-late 1950s, and maintained that position until the mid-1990s. Of course soda/Selters water wasn't unknown before that too.
Having a siphon (either suspiciously resembling that pre-WW2 English one, or that space-age-design, or, of course, penguin-shaped since mid-1960 and up until the end of the century) was relatively common, especially in bigger cities as well as “closed” (secret) towns, where restricted interaction with the outside world was compensated by wages, good schools and hospitals, homogeneous society of mostly well-educated and well-behaved people, and higher tier of provisioning.
The main problem were, of course, the chargers, the local equivalent of Sparklets. First, sometimes one could stumble upon the damn things in most unusual locations and circumstances; for example, a local shop in a remote village in Eastern Kazakhsan could get two crateloads of those for whatever reason, while syphon owners in Moscow, Leningrad, Ufa, or Irkutsk had no clues on where to get the dioxide to sparkle up their New Year table without resorting to chains of connections that led to some obscure military factory or to somebody pilfering some big restaurant supplies.
Second, the charges were dangerous. Production quality varied, and not once I heard horror stories, not all of which were made-up adult deterrents for little boys fascinated by mysterious vessel on top of a kitchen shelf (and the very idea of homemade soda), about the charges exploding because of bad production quality, sending thick metal shrapnel everywhere instead of bubbling up water. Those indeed held certain ground because in the late 1980s I myself witnessed ladies manning milkshake and pop at so-called “ice cream cafes” wrapping chargers (that were kept as spares for the not uncommon occasion of running out of a gas in a big tank) in several layers of towel - and not because it was that hard to screw on the charger holder...
There was a penguin syphon in my family too, but barely two times in several decades of its existence it was used for intended purpose. Once it was in 1989, and another in 1994. Now all these syphons are mostly useless because all the rubber gaskets have dried out and no all modern replacements fit, and modern equivalents, as well as much more reliable chargers, are readily available at least online with quick delivery.
Happy you're getting sponsors now! 🙂
in Argentina we still use the siphon. We have companies doing home delivery and restaurants provide them at the table
I can already see the opening bit of your "Whip-It!" cream-charger vid - it's going to be epic.
(why don't home carbonation products look as cool as those syphons?)
I have a Soda Syphon somewhere in my vast horde of STUFF I DON’T NEED.
But it was a real find @ that yard sale.
The best part of this channel is all the fun little tangents within these videos. Fascinating stuff!
Man, it's unreal that you mention slapstick comedy like The Three Stooges. As soon as I layed eyes on that it brought back memories of seeing it used in that show. Then when you mentioned it I was like ohh wow, yeah spot on!
I'm glad that cartoons have kept it alive as a prop. All I have to do is bark "Hey, Squidward!" real quickly and a whole new generation will probably have an image in their mind's eye.
My first thought was of Moe Howard spraying Curly & Larry with soda water too.
Here in Argentina we still have the service on soda syphons (sifón in spanish) to your home by private companies than also sell you bottled water ( in barrels of 15 or 20 litres)
Normally, the syphons carry 1 liter, but some restaurants or bars (old school ones) have even little syphons of 500 ml (half a litre) ideal for your Moscato wine or Vermout👌
We got the kids a Soda Stream dispenser for Christmas this year, possibly the most used gift they've ever received. Zero calories and they think they're getting a treat!
Back in the day some local dairies would offer sparkling water in pre-charged dispensing bottles delivered with your milk on the doorstep in the early morning.
Thank you Gilles for another fascinating rendition. Life would be so much less zesty without rabbit holes imho.
I particularly enjoyed the illustration of Paris in 1900 since I lived there from 1956-60. Lots more green space back then!
While I'm not a physician, I remember that the mixture of 5% CO2 and 95% of O2 was administered (together with other measures) to victims of methanol poisoning as late as in '70s (tat is, "from what I learned back then"), and the reason for CO2 in it was it stimulates the breathing reflex (thus making the patient to ventilate faster, which would rise the blood oxygen level which was crucial for preventing damage to the optical nerve by formaldehyde, which was product of methanol metabolism).
Also, the blackout that affect some free-divers WHILE "GOING UP" is caused by the fact that "at depth" more oxygen from air in the lungs gets pushed to the bloodstream (absorbed by it) and this prevents the C)2 build-up, which in turn "mutes" the "oxygen starvation" which would normally force the person to breath - but when he or she is surfacing there's a drop of the pressure, so whatever little of oxygen remains in lungs no longer gets absorbed by blood, which leads to blackout - and often to subsequent drowning.
Absolutely insane that you do these without teleprompter
I grew up with the identical model to that in your video, and had myself many drinks made with Rose's lime juice and that form of soda. Thank you for another well researched, professionally presented video. Enjoyed iy a lot.
My grandma had one of these in her many shelves and boxes full of antique junk. I used to play with the mechanism at the top as a kid and I knew it came from an old home bar, but I never understood exactly how it worked.
This was only 20 years ago, I wonder how old the siphon actually was.
It didn’t have metal mesh around it, just extremely thick glass.
Truth in advertising, this was surprisingly fascinating.
And as James Burke told us in Connections the discovery of how to carbonate water was just what was needed to make bitter quinine water (a treatment for malaria) not only palatable but downright delicious. Add a splash of gin to this newfangled "tonic water" as it was called and people were positively queuing up to take their medicine. They still are ;)
I was going to mention this myself, but glad to see someone beat me to it!
We had one of those big glass bottles with the mesh in the early 80's. I miss that thing.
Cool episode, now I want a seltzer bottle like that. The use of the Radium bulb was another interesting example of casual use of radioactive materials through ignorance.
I always enjoy your episodes that pertain to such topics, It would be great if you did an episode on the medical use of the Thorium X-ray contrast Thorotrast and it’s consequences.
Another video full of interesting discoveries! I used to think that the earliest sodas siphons must have used chemically generated carbonation (akin to Priestley's discovery) within the bottle of the siphon!
Thank you for going down rabbit holes and sharing it with us.
This is one of the channels which I enjoy most. It is always fresh and intelligent.
FYI: Soda Syphons are still sold today. Commonly styled and manufactured similar to 100 years ago. And, yes the 8g "sparklet" cartridges are still widely available.
i use a soda syphon all the time, soda alone is pretty good but i often drink it with some vermouth, 1 finger of cinzano or gancia and 3 to 4 of soda, refreshing and delicious, and with those proportions you dont feel the alcohol effects just the nice vermouth taste. but we use drago syphons made of steel instead of glass and its charged with big 350g co2 drago cylinders that i get refilled every few months for cheap.
This is one of the most interesting and informative channels on YT. Sensational
You missed the most important use of seltzer bottles, which is what I or we used to call them back in Brooklyn decades ago: they made fantastic water guns! At least I thought so, though I might have thought differently if I had dropped one. Our home delivered seltzer bottles didn't have the protective metal mesh. 😂 (Note the seltzer tears in the emoji.)
11:20 Although it was water and ice instead of dry ice, the USS Thresher comes to mind.
I honestly didnt realize how interesting this video was gonna be
This channel is taking off.
And that makes me very happy.
The "cork ejector" is a euphemism for an OSS assassination weapon....
I mean, by the looks of it the corkscrew product is basically a small wasp knife (first heard about them from sci-fi TTRPG Eclipse Phase, but apparently they're an actual thing mainly used for underwater fighting against humans or animals [presumably mostly sharks?]) with a long syringe needle instead of a full blade or shorter needle, what a frightening device to consider folks buying them as a novelty and leaving them lying around without the care and security a dangerous weapon should receive. Though I suppose the same goes for a number of power and hand tools and such... I guess a lot of tools are potentially very lethal if somebody gets stabbed with them, now that I think about it.
Also, using a whole CO2 cartridge (though presumably a small one) to remove a bottle cork in a slightly flashier, more frightening way (to intimidate dinner guests?) seems... wasteful?
I guess if they're easy to reload and trigger, they may be the easiest way for a person with very weak/arthritic hands to open a wine bottle? Still seems kind of excessive, you'd think a battery-powered corkscrew would be easier, though I guess these devices (and their ammunition) could be stored in a drawer without maintenance for a long time and still be good unlike a battery, and when they were first marketed there wasn't the tech for a convenient battery-powered power corkscrew...
@@05Matz imagine someone's eye or ear...
There's still a place in NewYork that delivers/pickups the bottles. Would definitely be a service I would use if it was available where I live.
The long leadup to the best intro yet
I've always wondered if the mesh covering was a safety feature to prevent broken glass being thrown about in case to glass vessel broke under pressure, was decorative, or both.
Both
Sparklet bulbs were used in the aeromodelling world to power tiny CO2 engines for small free flight models. The cylinder is finned not for cooling but for warming instead, as the expanding gas can freeze the engine solid as it runs.
Bro. Great job memorizing all these weird, wonderful facts!
I honestly though that "strangest apparatus" was an enema bag. I literally said "oh, no!" right before the reveal.
I have a Syphon manufactured by British Syphon Co limited that I got from my grandmother many years ago which is branded "W. Hay and sons" 1929 (an old soft drink company from Aberdeen in Scotland) on the metal valve/nozzle the glass vessel is acid etched with wm Corry and co from Belfast, presumably the original vessel broke at some point and got substituted.
Sadly the seals have long since perished but not sure I'd want to pressurize it anyway, it seems you had to do so through the nozzle as there is no port to screw on a gas canister and it only has one dip tube.. made from glass.
Great content as always. I know you’ve done a LOT on Canadian Cold War preps, would you consider a video on the US AT&T Long Lines?
I've always wondered what that thing Squidward was giving SpongeBob and Patrick soda with was in that one episode, cool.
Just chiming in to say I own a refillable one and it's saved me hundreds of dollars since I bought it, in a country where that's actually multiple minimum wages. More people should own them
As i got older in life, bubbly water became my primary hydration drink. Room temp is fine. I just buy in bottles as it's fairly cheap in bulk and soda syphons and cartridges are quite expensive here. In my childhood in Poland, we used to have a syphon, a metal one, which is safer than glass ones.
anyway, prefer not to have to filter tapwater and carbonate. cheaper and easier to buy ready.
There is also an brand of soft drinks called Sifon with plastic soda syphon caps.
My Czech grandparents had one of these and used it up to the 80s.
Well, I just found out something I didn't know I needed. I want the light blue and red Sparklets soda bottles shown at 17:42. Those are indeed futuristic and cool looking.
A very similar device is also used by baristas for making whipped cream, but can be used to make nitro cold brew and soda in a pinch.
Wow, irradiated water!
Now that sounds refreshing!
Ignorance may be bliss, but it can also be pretty damn poisonous, huh?
"What do you mean Mercury wont make me immortal?"
I've always wondered what these things were!
FYI, the song in the beginning is Moonlight Cocktail by Glenn Miller.
Nice to see Gilles mixing a Sidecar. The man has class.
Excellent video! Thanks!
Totally a pleasure. Merci beaucoup!
I've had alot of fun with these devices, the bottles were available very cheap a while ago, it was always the cartridge screw device that was hard to find. However, CO2 is not the best gas thats available in the same "8g" canisters. The "finest of all airs"
Well done sir! Well done indeed.
i miss soda delivery. that and milk were coming to an end when i was a kid... helped it on its way as we kid might swipe them and use tgo squit each other every now and then
The wife has a device (Made in Austria) that you put cream in, attach the sparklet, and voila whipped cream pressurized. It is a fairly modern device purchased new in the 2000’s
Very similar to the soda device scaled for a pint of cream. Aluminum tank. Love your show
Whipped cream needs nitrous oxide. Same canister design though. Whippets! Whippets' real good!
Lol. I Assumed it was CO2 Didn’t know N2O. It is a smaller cartridge apparently to avoid wrong gas
@@paulmangus6737 nope, most of them were exactly the same size, and if you bought the wrong ones, you'd find out very quickly.
It is very interesting, how people differently know the technical history due to the language differences and geographical distance, which separates us from the historical sources.
In Hungary, it is taugth in schools that the soda syphon and the mass produced carbonated water were invented by Jedlik Ányos (1800-1895) in 1826.
…and yes: there is a popular alcoholic beverage in Hungary, the so-called "fröccs" (spritzer in English), also invented by Jedlik Ányos: carbonated water and wine (strictly without ice). - It simply not works with carbonated mineral water. Carbonated water from tap water is the best. (Believe me, I tried it. Fortunately drinking tap water is safe in Hungary.)
The soda and the whipping syphon are a common household equipment in Hungary: basically every household have at least one piece of each. All of them - but at least most of them - made of metal instead of glass.
Unfortunatelly, the distribution of the returnable 8g sparklet cartridge was ended in March 2018.
But still there are small shops in Hungary, where you can get filled your soda syphon. - This system uses an another type of soda syphon, which is simpler, and cannot accept sparklet cartridge. This syphon made of glass in the old times - in the 90's I have saw some -, but today it is made of transparent plastic, with the logo of the soda shop. Because it is returnable.
I'd love to see an episode on safety razors, King Gillette, etc.
There were (and I think still are - barely) syphons which came pre-filled from the soda company and are not refillable by the end user.
What a coincidence! I just bought one a couple of weeks ago to fix up.
In the same generation as the 3 stooges and their use of seltzer spray on victims, another one I remember is Clarabelle on the Howdy Doody show