Hires Root Beer

Like several other soft drinks, Hires Root Beer (now owned by Dr Pepper Snapple) was developed by a pharmacist. According to one of the many stories behind the origin of America’s oldest root beer, Philadelphia’s Charles E. Hires discovered an herbal tea made of roots, berries, and herbs while on his honeymoon.

Hires introduced a root beer powder mix that consumers could use to make their own root beer at the 1876 U.S. Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where Alexander Graham Bell showcased his telephone. Charles developed a soda fountain syrup version of his root beer in 1884 and began bottling the drink in 1893. Only Detroit's Vernor's Ginger Ale is older, introduced in 1866 and is now also owned by Dr Pepper Snapple.

His decision to market the beverage as a beer rather than a tea, as he had originally considered doing, appealed to the Pennsylvania miners and added to Hires’ popularity during Prohibition. Incidentally, the R-J on the bottle stood for Root Juices.

Why do we say Hello

Thomas Edison wrote a letter to the president of the Telegraph Company in Pittsburgh, PA. In it, he suggested that the word, 'hello' would be a more appropriate greeting than 'ahoy', as was suggested by Alexander Graham Bell for answering the telephone. That is why we pick up the phone anywhere in the world and say: 'Hello, Allo. Alo. Bueno. Pronto. . . wazzup!

The Telephone

During the 1870s, engineers were working to find a way to send multiple messages over one telegraph wire at the same time. Alexander Graham Bell was reading a book by Hermann Von Helmholtz, and got the idea to send sounds simultaneously over a wire instead, but Bell’s German was a little rusty, and the author had mentioned nothing about the transmission of sound via wire. He continued to pursue the solution, based on his false assumption, until he and his mechanic, Thomas Watson, built a device that could transmit sound over wires. The telephone was born in 1876, because Alexander Graham Bell didn't know it couldn't be done.