Soft drinks have been an anchor in American culture since the beginning of the twentieth century, but the roots of these beverages extend much further back in time. The first carbonated soft drinks, which were named as such in order to clearly differentiate them from hard, alcoholic beverages, and the technology to make them were imported from the Europeans, who had discovered how to force carbon dioxide gas into water back in the sixteenth century. The original bubbly drinks were carbonated mineral waters mimicking those found in therapeutic natural springs and the first of these were patented in the United States in 1810. Less than a decade later, the soda fountain was patented as well. According to John Mariani's The Dictionary of American Food-Drink, ginger, lemon, strawberry,vanilla were the popular flavors of the time, but towards the end of the century, the first cola drinks, which would eventually revolutionize the soft drink industry, were being developed.