It's a gas

 A website called Back Then History offered a sparkling history of seltzer water, once described by a friend of mine as "water that tastes like when your leg goes to sleep." I can't get interested in regular tap water anymore; it's got to have that fizz.

And I'm not alone. The Ancient Romans used the term aqua saltare to mean what we call a soda fountain. They found natural mineral water that bubbled right out of the ground, much like Jed Clampett found "bubblin' crude" oil, but you can drink  this kind. Fast forward to 17th Century Malvern, England, where mineral springs were discovered. Soon enough, people were flocking to Malvern to drink and bathe in the bubbling water they felt had healing properties.

Then, chemist and grammarian (what a combination!) Joseph Priestly met with Benjamin Franklin in 1765. Those two went on to figure out ways to infuse carbon dioxide bubbles into still water. And here, you thought Ben Franklin was all almanacs and kite flying!  Priestly said, "I'll tell you what. Let's create our own carbon dioxide by mixing sulfuric acid and chalk, then we'll put that CO2 in a pig's bladder. THEN we'll put that mix in a water bottle and shake it up until the water absorbs the gas.

 Building off the work of two scientists named Jan Baptista van Helmont and Joseph Black, Priestly came up with a method of creating sparkling water by first creating CO2 by mixing sulfuric acid with chalk, collecting the CO2 in a pig’s bladder, and then transferring it to an inverted water bottle and shaking the bottle until the water absorbed the gas. 

Local pigs were delighted hear that John Nooth got rid of the bladder idea and used three stacked glass vials. At first, Priestly got all up in Nooth's face, claiming that the water tasted better when it had sat in the pig bladder for a spell, but he eventually came around to the Nooth way.

And of course, you knew this name was going to come up.   Johann Jacob Schweppe invented a crank-operated compression pump that mixed the gas and the water, and left the pigs with their bladders, and before you could say "Schweppervescence," people all over were drinking bubble-up water and making ice cream sodas.

And when it came to pass that Sunday-go-to-meeting sinbusters declared that soda water was too frilly to be enjoyed on the Christian Sabbath, people started just putting the ice cream and syrup and what-have-you in a tall dish, leaving out the sods, and calling that dish an "Ice Cream Sundae."

I ain't lyin'!