Highball

This classic American drink is half whiskey, half carbonated water. There are two stories about how it got its name, both related to the metal ball that railroad stationmasters would hang high on a pole in the station to signal “full speed ahead” to locomotive engineers. Patrick Gavin Duffy, the barman at the Ashland House in 1890 and the author of The Official Mixer’s Manual (1934), claimed that he named his highball after the speed with which it could be assembled. Another story from around the 1890s says the highball was created by John Slaughtery, a barman at a Saint Louis railway saloon, whose railroad employee customers had only a short break, during which they wanted a drink they could consume quickly.