Harvey Washington Wiley was a long-time chemist who spearheaded the U.S. government’s efforts to improve American food and drink. He played a key role in the passage and implementation of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, from which followed regulations that defined, among other things, what whiskey was, and what types existed.
One can read his take on whiskey and his account of the government’s effort to define it in Part X of Harvey W. Wiley, Beverages and Their Adulteration: Origin, Composition, Manufacture, Natural, Artifical, Fermented, Distilled, Alkaloidal, and Fruit Juices (York, PA: P. Blakiston’s & Co, 1919), pp. 285-330. (Free via Google Books.)
