BARBARA KLEIN: Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Barbara Klein.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: And I'm Christopher Cruise. This week on our program, we look at the history of root beer. Most Americans know it only as a soft drink enjoyed by generations of children and adults. Yet root beer played a part in shaping the modern food and beverage industry. It even launched the Marriott hotels around the world.

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BARBARA KLEIN: Root beer is a sweet drink similar to birch beer but popular mostly in North America. Different versions can be made from at least thirty choices of ingredients. These include sassafras, vanilla, wintergreen, cherry-tree bark, licorice root, black cherry and cane sugar. Brewers who make root beer can also use flavorings like nutmeg, molasses, cinnamon, clove and honey. Some versions contain caffeine.

A cool treat especially on a hot summer day is a root beer float, sometimes called a "black cow" or "brown cow." You simply fill a glass with root beer and float vanilla ice cream on the thick foam on top. Some people have their own recipes for root beer floats which you can watch them making on YouTube.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: But some root beers taste like bubble gum or medicine. This helps explain why not everyone likes root beer. There was even a scene about that in the movie "Big Fan."

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But root beer is considered a classic American drink. This is thanks in large part to one man. Charles Hires was a pharmacist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At least four conflicting stories are told about how he came to find or create his recipe for root beer in the eighteen seventies.

Hires called it "The Great Health Drink." He sold it in his drug store under the name "Hires Root Tea."

BARBARA KLEIN: At some point, Charles Hires renamed it root beer, perhaps to appeal more to beer-drinking men. Early versions were a combination of bitter and sweet. He experimented. He used flavorings from trees and plants like sassafras and sarsaparilla, wintergreen, birch bark, herbs and juniper berries. He mixed them and boiled them until he had what he considered the perfect combination.

By eighteen seventy-six he was ready to present Hires Root Beer at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. That event celebrated America's one hundredth birthday. The Philadelphia exhibition also included Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, Heinz ketchup and the Remington typewriter.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Charles Hires did not invent root beer. The Library of Congress has cookbooks that contain recipes from ten or twenty years before he began to sell his version. But Hires gets credit as the first person to produce and market root beer throughout the country.

He sold his health drink cold. People could buy it in bottles, but some people liked to make their own root beer. So he also sold root beer kits.

Hires sold a powder mix and a liquid extract. He sold the extract to local brewers around the country. They added water and prepared the root beer. Today this idea of selling syrup to locally owned bottlers can be found throughout the soft drink industry.

Charles Hires also believed strongly in the power of advertising. He advertised his root beer in newspapers and on trading cards.