who invented root beer

Root beer as a concept existed since colonial America when settlers made a "root beer" style beverage using roots like sassafras and sarsaparilla. However, the person credited with inventing and commercially popularizing root beer in the form known today is Charles Elmer Hires, a Philadelphia pharmacist. He developed a root beer recipe using sassafras and other herbs and first marketed it in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, selling it initially as a powder to make root tea. He chose the name "root beer" to appeal to Pennsylvania coal miners as a non-alcoholic alternative to beer. By the late 1800s, Hires began bottling his root beer extract, leading to wide distribution across the United States by 1893. Thus, while root beer existed in some form much earlier, Charles E. Hires is recognized for inventing and commercializing the modern root beer beverage.