In 1929, Charles Leiper Grigg, creator of Howdy Orange Drink and the Howdy Corporation, came up with a new soft drink formula, which he dubbed "Bib-label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda." The lemon-lime drink contained lithium citrate, which is a mood stabilizer used in the psychiatric treatment of manic states and bipolar disorders, which allowed for the drink to be marketed as a patent medicine hangover cure. Despite the fact that the soda hit the market two weeks before the Wall Street crash of 1929, and the fact that there were over 600 lemon-lime drinks on the market at the time, the soda was a success. In the early 1930s the name was changed to 7-Up Lithiated Lemon-Lime, likly to reflect the seven ingredients. Not long after that, the name was changed again, simply to 7-Up. Grigg acknowledged the profound success of the new drink when he changed the name of his company from the Howdy Corporation to the 7-Up Corporation in 1936. In 1950 lithium citrate was removed from the formula and 7-Up ended its time as a patent medicine. By the late 1940s 7-Up was the third best selling soft drink in the nation.
-Professor Walter
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