On this date in 1898, North Carolina pharmacist Caleb Bradham (1867-1934) made the fateful decision to rebrand his most famous concoction. After August 28, 1898, the product that Bradham had been marketing as “Brad’s Drink” adopted the brand name of Pepsi-Cola, a name derived from ‘cola’ for the kola nut extract found in the recipe and the digestive enzyme ‘pepsin’. Pepsin was not part of the formula for Brad’s Drink or Pepsi-Cola, but Bradham was promoting it as a digestive aid, and believed that the association would help with sales.
In recognition of the date, we’re sharing this soda fountain named ‘Glena’ from James W. Tufts (1835-1903), the Boston, Massachusetts patentee and manufacturer of the Arctic Soda-Water Apparatus and founder of the Arctic Soda Fountain Company. In 1895, four years after merging his company into the American Soda Fountain Co., Tufts joined Bradham as a resident of North Carolina, establishing the town of Pinehurst, around 150 miles from Bradham’s home town of New Bern.
This photograph was taken at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Glena served refreshments to visitors of Building 7, the Shoe and Leather Building. Exhibits in the background of the image show shoe and leather products from Edwin C. Burt of New York City, C.H. Fargo & Company of Chicago, and Thomas Feary & Sons of Albany. To see more photographs and other materials from Hagley Library’s Centennial Exhibition photograph and ephemera collection (Accession 2003.255), just click here to visit its page in our Digital Archive.
