Charles Leiper Grigg was the inventor of Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime soda, better known by its later name, 7 Up

7 Up

7 Up is a brand of a lemon-lime flavored non-caffeinated soft drink. The rights to the brand are held by Dr Pepper Snapple Group in the United States, and PepsiCo in the rest of the world, including Puerto Rico, where the concentrate is manufactured at the Pepsi facility in Cidra...

. He invented the drink in October 1929. Grigg became acquainted with the carbonated beverage business after moving to St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

. Prior to inventing 7 Up, Grigg had created an orange soft drink named "Whistle" for the Vess

Vess

Vess Soda is a brand of soft drink manufactured and distributed primarily in the St. Louis, Missouri, USA, metropolitan area. The company was founded in 1916. At the height of its popularity, Vess had bottling plants in several locations including Asheville, Lafayette, Anderson and Cincinnati...

 Soda Company. It is still made and sold in St. Louis.

History

Charles Leiper Grigg was born in 1868 in Price's Branch, Missouri. At the age of 22, Grigg moved to St. Louis and began working in the advertising field in which he was introduced to the carbonated beverage business through the various agencies he was partnered.

By 1919, Charles Leiper Grigg was working as a salesman for a manufacturing company owned by Vess Jones. It was there that Grigg invented and marketed his first soft drink called "Whistle". The success of the drink lead to his promotion to the position of sales and marketing manager, however, eventually he and Voss came to loggerheads and Grigg left the company, leaving Whistle behind. He eventually settled at the Warner Jenkinson Company, developing flavoring agents for soft drinks.

It was at this time that Grigg invented then his second soft drink, an orange-flavored beverage with 14% sugar named "Howdy". He partnered with financier Edmund G. Ridgway and lawyer Frank Gladney and formed the Howdy Company. Based on the quality of the product and supported by Ridgway's financing, the company grew quickly, adding bottling companies anxious to sell the drink.

Urban legend

A common urban legend about Charles Leiper Grigg is that he was an albino, and that the red dot on the bottle is supposed to represent his red eyes. In fact there are no official references to Grigg having been an albino, and in (black-and-white) photographs his eye

Human eye

The human eye is an organ which reacts to light for several purposes. As a conscious sense organ, the eye allows vision. Rod and cone cells in the retina allow conscious light perception and vision including color differentiation and the perception of depth...

s appear normally pigmented. Also, the 7-up logo with the red dot came into use in the 1970s, after Grigg had died.