John Mervin Nooth

Nooth's scientific work brought him into contact with Benjamin Franklin, to whom he wrote in 1773 to propose improvements to a machine for generating static electricity.

[2] In December 1774, Nooth's paper entitled "The description of an apparatus for impregnating water with fixed air" was read at the Royal Society.

Carbon dioxide was generated in the bottom vessel by the action of diluted sulfuric acid on pieces of chalk or marble.

Nooth argued that his device was superior because it was easier to use and, unlike Priestley's which used an animal bladder to contain the "fixed air", did not cause the water to taste of urine.

[4] At the time, carbonated drinks were valued more for their supposed medicinal qualities than for their taste, and it was this application that led Nooth to invent his apparatus.

David Macbride had recently posited that "putrefactive" conditions—a classification that referred mainly to what are now recognised as infections, but which also included scurvy—were caused by a loss of "fixed air".

[4] In the late 1770s, Thomas Henry used a device based on the apparatus to manufacture carbonated water at a commercial scale for the first time,[7] though Johann Jacob Schweppe's design would later come to be favoured over Nooth's for this purpose.

[4] In 1846 the dentist James Robinson used a device incorporating the bottom of a Nooth apparatus to deliver general anaesthesia for the first time in Britain;[8] not long afterwards, Peter Squire, working with Robert Liston, devised an improved inhaler based on Robinson's design, which was successfully used to anaesthetise a patient during an amputation.

[2] Nooth served through the American Revolutionary War, becoming superintendent-general of the British military hospitals in America in 1779, and returned home in 1784.

While in Canada, Nooth became involved in politics and continued his scientific and medical pursuits, corresponding frequently on these subjects with Joseph Banks.