Aerated water bottle

This green glass bottle was produced for the Marlborough Aerated Water Co. Ltd.. It has a marble in the neck which, although now held secure by tissue paper, would once have been held against a rubber seal by the pressure inside the bottle.

Aerated Water

Carbonated water was first produced in New Zealand in 1845, and by the end of the century there were aerated water factories in towns and cities across the country. As an article printed in the Star in 1881 explained, aerated water was produced by 'impregnating' pure water with carbonic acid gas under heavy pressure.

Water Bottles

With aerated water in such high demand, the problem of producing safe and hygienic bottles was an urgent one. Each manufacturer retained ownership of their bottles, which they collected, cleaned, and reused.

Bottles such as this one, with a marble in the neck, were known as 'Codd bottles,' and were patented by English engineer Hiram Codd in 1872. The marble, held against the rubber seal, helped to preserve the carbonation, while Codd's innovation was to insert a ridge inside the neck of the bottle which kept the marble in place as the liquid was poured.

Codd bottles provided an alternative to the inconvenient 'Hamilton' bottles, which because of their torpedo shape could not be stored upright. Codd bottles were less likely to be recycled, however, because the bottles were quite often broken to free the marble inside: a tempting prize for children. Nevertheless they were in popular use for almost fifty years until replaced by the metal crown cap in the early twentieth century.