Isaac Emerson
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Isaac Emerson
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Bromo-Seltzer
Birth: Jul. 24, 1859 Chapel Hill (Orange County) Orange County North Carolina, USA Death: Jan. 23, 1931 Baltimore city Maryland, USA
Isaac Emerson was married to Emilie Askew and loving father of Margaret Emerson McKim (Mrs Margaret McKim was married 3 times after the divorce of Dr. Smith Hollins McKim) and step father of Daisey. His second marriage was to Anne Preston. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1879, later spending time as an instructor in chemistry there.
During the time he was establishing his business, Captain Emerson also led his own naval force during the Spanish-American War. In 1894, he formed the Maryland Naval Reserves and, by 1898, provided the entire crew for the United States Ship Dixie. Comissioned a Lieutenant, he received his rank as Captain after the war.
Emerson was considered a pioneer among America's businessmen because he realized the importance of advertising. At the time of his death in 1937, he had accumulated an estate of $20 million, owning the controlling stock in four corporations: Emerson's Bromo-Seltzer, Inc.; the Emerson Drug Corporation; the Maryland Glass Corporation and the Emerson Hotel.
<Bromo-Seltzer>
In 1888, behind the prescription counter of a modest drugstore on East Pratt Street near Charles in Baltimore, Isaac E. Emerson first conceived the idea of the headache remedy. His background in chemistry and pharmacy led to the development of a granular effervescent salt he named "Bromo-Seltzer." Dispensing it to friends and customers at his drugstore,it soon became so successful that he abandoned his retail business to devote his time to the manufacture of his product. Eventually, he organized the Emerson Drug Company, incorporating it in Maryland in 1891.
Bromo-Seltzer was first sold in blue glass bottles that were manufactured by the Cumberland Glass Company, of Bridgeton, New Jersey, although one source lists Hazel-Atlas as the bottle maker. As the demand for Bromo-Seltzer grew, Cumberland was unable to meet the demand for the bottles. Captain Emerson then asked Philip I. Heuisler, his vice-president in charge of manufacturing, to organize a glass factory to make the bottles. Acin light or dark blue glass. It is believed some were given to drugstores as premiums for ordering Bromo-Seltzer. Others were gifts to glass factory visitors who made a two-and-a-half hour tour of the plant for thirty cents.
By 1928, the Bromo-Seltzer business, although larger than ever before, represented only about twenty-five percent of the total manufacturing capacity of Maryland Glass. In the decades following, Maryland Glass continued to expand and, by 1964, the firm employed some seven hundred people who worked around the clock, turning out approximately one million glass bottles and jars each day. The company became the leading producer of blue glassware in the world.
FIZZIES® was also invented by Emerson Drug Company. The idea derived from scientists working with chemical formulas similar to "Bromo Seltzer" and wondering if a fun, fruit flavored drink could be developed the same way. "Wouldn't it be grand if we could drop a tablet in a glass of water and have an instant soda pop?" After long hard work, they finally figured out how to combine the right combinations of fruit flavoring, sweetener, citric acid and sodium bicarbonate (a substance that is much like baking soda) into a magical tablet that when dropped into water, turned water into an instant sparkling, effervescent fruit drink!
In 1956, Maryland Glass, together with its parent company, Emerson Drug, merged with Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Company, of Morris Plains, New Jersey. The Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Company is now part of Pfizer.
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