TL;DR: The word "cocktail" first appeared in print in 1806, but the tools and techniques behind modern drink-making weren't formalized until the 20th century. In 1913, Louis Irving Reichner patented a cocktail shaker that combined a mixer, juice extractor, and strainer in one device, helping transform bartending into a precise craft. Original prints of that patent are available framed or unframed.
In 1806, a small upstate New York newspaper called The Balance and Columbian Repository published a reader's letter asking what a "cocktail" was. The editor replied: "a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters." That four-ingredient definition, printed in a regional paper that most Americans have never heard of, is the first documented use of the word. The drink had been around for decades before anyone thought to name it. The name stuck for two centuries.
What makes cocktail history unusual is how much of it was shaped by disruption: Prohibition drove American bartenders to Havana and Paris, where they invented new drinks far from home. Wars popularized certain spirits and killed demand for others. Immigration brought ingredients across oceans. And through all of it, the tools in the bartender's hand kept quietly evolving, from bare palm to wooden paddle to the precisely engineered shaker that Reichner patented in 1913.
Before the Cocktail: Mixed Drinks in the Ancient World
Humans have been mixing fermented liquids with other ingredients for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptian records describe honey-sweetened beer. Romans mixed wine with seawater, resin, and spices. Medieval Europeans drank hypocras, a spiced wine with honey or sugar. None of these were cocktails in the modern sense, but they reflect the same underlying impulse: a base spirit made more interesting through combination.
The punch bowl, which arrived in Britain from India in the early 17th century, was arguably the direct ancestor of the cocktail. Punch combined a spirit (often arrack or rum), citrus, sugar, spice, and water in large communal vessels. The formula for a good punch was essentially the same as a good cocktail, just scaled up. When individual portion sizes became the norm in the 19th century American saloon, the cocktail era had effectively begun.
The 19th Century American Bar
The golden age of American cocktail culture spans roughly from the 1840s through Prohibition in 1920. The professional bartender emerged as a recognizable figure during this period, and the cocktail menu became a form of creative expression rather than just a list of available drinks.
Jerry Thomas, the most famous bartender of the 19th century, published Bar-Tender's Guide in 1862, the first comprehensive cocktail recipe book in American history. Thomas treated bartending as theater. He is said to have flamboyantly poured his signature Blue Blazer, a burning mixture of Scotch and hot water, from one cup to another in a long arc of flame, performing the trick only on cold nights when he judged the steam would be sufficiently dramatic. His book standardized recipes that had previously existed only as oral tradition passed between barmen.
The drinks of this era reflected the spirit culture of the time. Whiskey, particularly rye and bourbon, was the dominant American spirit. Bitters, produced by small apothecary shops, added botanical complexity to simple mixtures. Sweet vermouth arrived from Europe and found a home in American glasses. By the 1870s, the Manhattan and its close relatives were being served in fine establishments from New York to San Francisco.
Classic Cocktails and Their Origins
The Manhattan is one of the earliest cocktails with a verifiable American origin, believed to have been created at New York's Manhattan Club around 1870. Its formula, rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, and Angostura bitters, is deceptively simple. Each ingredient must be of high quality. The balance between the whiskey's warmth and the vermouth's sweetness is the entire point of the drink. Dozens of variations have appeared over the decades; the original remains the standard.
The Aviation appeared in 1916 in Hugo Ensslin's Recipes for Mixed Drinks, created at New York's Hotel Wallick. The original formula called for gin, maraschino liqueur, lemon juice, and crème de violette, the last ingredient giving the drink its pale sky-blue color. Crème de violette became difficult to source through much of the 20th century, and most mid-century versions of the Aviation omitted it entirely. The rediscovery of original cocktail recipes in the early 2000s prompted bartenders to restore the violet liqueur to the recipe, returning the drink to its full color and flavor.
The Bloody Mary traces to the 1920s at Harry's New York Bar in Paris, a gathering point for American expatriates avoiding Prohibition at home. Fernand Petiot's original formula was equal parts tomato juice and vodka. Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, lemon juice, and celery salt accumulated over subsequent years, producing the savory complexity that makes the Bloody Mary unique among spirits-based drinks.
Prohibition and Its Paradox
Prohibition, which took effect in the United States in January 1920, was intended to end the cocktail culture. It achieved roughly the opposite. Driven underground, cocktail-making became more creative, not less. Bootleg spirits were often harsh and unpleasant on their own, which pushed bartenders toward more elaborate mixtures designed to mask the flaws in the base spirit.
Drinks like the Bee's Knees, a combination of gin, honey, and lemon juice, were partly practical: honey and citrus were effective at covering the rough edges of Prohibition-era gin. The Last Word, created at the Detroit Athletic Club during Prohibition, combined equal parts gin, Green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur, and lime juice in a formula that balanced four assertive ingredients into something unexpectedly harmonious. Both drinks fell out of fashion after Prohibition ended, then were rediscovered by the craft cocktail movement of the early 2000s.
American bartenders who relocated during Prohibition carried their expertise elsewhere. Fernand Petiot in Paris, the bartenders at Havana's Hotel Nacional, and the expatriate bars of London and Brussels all became repositories of American cocktail knowledge while domestic bartending atrophied. When Prohibition ended in 1933, many of the most accomplished American bartenders had spent thirteen years working abroad.
The Tiki Era and Mid-Century Invention
The 1930s brought something entirely new: the tiki cocktail. Donn Beach, the founder of Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood, invented a style of drink that combined multiple rums with fruit juices, syrups, and exotic spices, served in elaborately decorated vessels in bars designed to evoke a romanticized South Pacific. The drinks were complex, deliberately hard to replicate, and immensely popular.
Trader Vic's, the competing tiki empire founded by Victor Bergeron, claims credit for the Mai Tai, the drink that became synonymous with the movement. The original 1944 Mai Tai recipe used aged Jamaican rum, lime juice, orange curaçao, orgeat syrup, and rock candy syrup. It was not, in Bergeron's conception, a tropical fruit bomb but a spirit-forward drink designed to showcase the rum.
The mid-century also saw vodka's rise in America, driven in part by clever marketing. Drinks like the Moscow Mule (1941), the Cosmopolitan, and the Madras, a straightforward combination of vodka, cranberry juice, and orange juice, established vodka as the dominant American spirit, a position it has held ever since.
The Craft Cocktail Revival
By the 1990s, American cocktail culture had been dominated for decades by sugary, spirit-light drinks made with premade mixes and cheap pour-and-stir technique. The craft cocktail revival that began in New York in the late 1990s and early 2000s was a direct reaction to that simplification.
Bartenders at places like Milk & Honey, Pegu Club, and Death & Company began sourcing forgotten ingredients, restoring original recipes, and treating ice, dilution, and technique with the same seriousness a chef brings to cooking. The Penicillin, created by Sam Ross at Milk & Honey in 2005, combined Scotch whisky, honey-ginger syrup, and fresh lemon juice into a drink that felt genuinely new while drawing on centuries of ingredient knowledge. It became one of the first 21st-century cocktails to enter the permanent canon.
The revival also produced a generation of bartenders who understood cocktail history as a living resource rather than a museum exhibit. Drinks like the Last Word and the Aviation were pulled from obscurity and returned to menus. Bitters producers who had disappeared during Prohibition were reestablished. Ice programs became sophisticated enough that the shape and clarity of the ice cube was treated as a design element.
The Shaker Behind It All
Throughout all of these eras, one tool held everything together: the cocktail shaker. The physical act of combining ingredients under cold and pressure, then straining the result into a glass, is the fundamental technique of the craft. Ancient Egyptians mixed drinks in basic containers. Medieval bartenders used jugs and ladles. The Boston shaker, Cobbler shaker, and French shaker each emerged in the 19th century as bartenders specialized.
In 1913, Louis Irving Reichner filed a patent for a cocktail shaker that combined three functions in a single device: a liquid mixer, a juice extractor with a detachable top, and an integrated strainer with measurement markings on the glass body for precise ingredient proportioning. The design addressed the actual problems a working bartender faced: the need for consistent ratios, the separation of pulp and seeds from citrus juice, and the efficiency of preparation during a busy service. Reichner's 1913 patent did not invent the cocktail shaker, but it formalized in engineering drawings the purpose and function of a tool that had evolved informally over decades. The drawing is the clearest single document of what professional bartending looked like at the moment cocktail culture was about to be interrupted by the most dramatic disruption in its history.
Seven years after Reichner filed his patent, Prohibition began. The craft he helped define went underground, moved abroad, evolved in secret, and eventually came back stronger than it left.
Shop Cocktail Patent Art Prints
Cocktail Shaker (1913), Louis Irving Reichner
Reichner's 1913 patent drawing captures the cocktail shaker at the precise moment professional bartending became a recognized craft, just before Prohibition scattered American bar culture across the Atlantic. The design combined mixing, juicing, and straining in a single device with measurement markings for consistent ratios. It is the document that shows how seriously someone took the mechanics of making a drink well. Clean lines, instantly recognizable form, and a story behind it most bartenders have never heard. The kind of piece that works in a kitchen, a bar cart corner, or a home with a well-stocked liquor cabinet.
Best for: Cocktail enthusiasts, home bartenders, anyone with a well-stocked bar cart
Frequently Asked Questions
When was the word "cocktail" first used?
The first documented use of the word "cocktail" to describe a drink appeared in the May 13, 1806 issue of The Balance and Columbian Repository, a newspaper published in Hudson, New York. The editor defined it as "a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters." Mixed drinks existed long before that date, but 1806 is the earliest verified written record of the specific term.
Who invented the cocktail shaker?
No single inventor created the cocktail shaker. Rudimentary mixing vessels existed in ancient civilizations, and the Boston shaker and Cobbler shaker developed informally in 19th-century American bars. Louis Irving Reichner filed a notable patent in 1913 for a shaker that combined a mixer, juice extractor, and integrated strainer in a single device with measurement markings, a design that formalized the professional bartender's workflow in engineering drawings.
What happened to cocktail culture during Prohibition?
Prohibition, which ran from 1920 to 1933 in the United States, drove cocktail culture underground and abroad. Many skilled American bartenders relocated to Paris, Havana, and London, where they continued to work and innovate. The harsh quality of bootleg spirits actually drove creativity, producing drinks like the Bee's Knees and the Last Word designed to mask poor-quality gin. When Prohibition ended, the most accomplished American bartenders had spent over a decade working outside the country.
What started the craft cocktail revival?
The craft cocktail revival began in New York City in the late 1990s and accelerated through the early 2000s, led by bartenders at venues like Milk & Honey, Pegu Club, and Death & Company. These bartenders sourced forgotten ingredients, restored original recipes, and applied culinary-level precision to dilution, ice, and technique. The movement spread globally and is largely responsible for today's culture of serious drink-making, quality spirits, and historically informed cocktail menus.
What cocktail patent art prints are available?
The original U.S. Patent Office drawing for the Reichner cocktail shaker (1913) is available as a framed watercolor print, rendered from the actual engineering document filed when the invention was new. It is a piece that belongs in any kitchen, bar room, or space where cocktails are taken seriously. Shop the full cocktail patent collection →
Written by Rider Tuff, founder of Timeless Patents. Timeless Patents makes museum-quality patent art prints from original U.S. Patent Office documents, celebrating the inventors behind your favorite sports, hobbies, and passions. Every print is available framed or unframed. Shop the full cocktail collection →
