In the early 19th century, lamp designs burned many different fuels, including rapeseed oil, lard, and whale oil rendered from whale blubber (and the more expensive spermaceti from the heads of sperm whales), but most Americans could only afford light emitted by animal-fat tallow candles.

By 1850, the U.S. Patent Office recorded almost 250 different patents for all manner of lamps, wicks, burners, and fuels to meet growing consumer demand for illumination. At the time, most Americans lived in almost complete darkness when the sun went down.

The Boston company of Rufus H. Spalding manufactured burning fluid and camphene as inexpensive illuminating fuels while promoting “portable and steady lamps of every description.”

Up to 1840, oil from whale blubber was the most popular lamp fuel. It was overtaken by less expensive lamp fuels that included lard oil and turpentine mixtures, as well as camphene, a term coined by Augustus Webb of New York in his 1838 patent for a lamp burning distilled spirits of turpentine.

Camphene, the distilled spirits of turpentine used as a lamp fuel, produced an inexpensive and bright light but required a chimney or draft system to adequately produce combustion without smoking. Henry Porter of Bangor, Maine, in 1835 patented his camphene mixture and opened a business to sell it in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. The concoction combined one part turpentine with four parts alcohol and a small amount of camphor for aroma.

“Porter’s Burning Fluid” became a popular lamp fuel. It burned brightly and smelled good, but could be dangerous, the Boston Mattapan Register reported, explaining that house fires and injuries were too common.

Many other burning fluid lamps were simple, requiring only a burner with a narrow tube or tubes to hold the wick — and no chimney, according to Charles Leib, publications chairman of The Rushlight Club, an international association of collectors and students of historic lighting.

The alcohol mixtures used, however, contained highly volatile vapors, Leib added, noting, “The burning fluid lamps were prone to mishandling, especially when filling, resulting in “flash fires” when escaping vapors from the burning fluid lamp came in contact with an existing flame or fire.”

Before kerosene, two-wicked “burning fluid” lamps were popular but sometimes dangerous sources of light.

The Boston newspaper noted on September 10, 1859:

There are different kinds of lamps and of lamp oil, adapted to different tastes and circumstances; and there is one at least, most abominable invention under the name of Camphene Oil, or Burning Fluid, which were better denominated a Swift and Ready Means of Destruction for Private Families; for this designation would convey a true idea of its nature and effects.

This was a common misstatement, putting together camphene and burning fluid as the same product, according to Leib. “During the popularity of burning fluid lamps in the 1850s, numerous patents for safety features were issued to solve these problems,” explained the 2011 author of “Did You Mean Camphene or Burning Fluid?” in The Bulletin (pages 28-37) of the Pewter Collectors’ Club of America. 

Despite the perceived risks, consumer demand for camphene and burning fluids grew. By 1856, Rufus H. Spalding had taken over Henry Porter’s Boston business as the “Sole Manufacturer of Porter’s Patent Composition.”

Camphene was spirits of turpentine. Burning fluids included various inflammable mixtures of which turpentine was only a part. Circa 1855 advertisements for “Original Porter’s Patent Burning Fluid, Superior Camphene & Alcohol” manufactured by Rufus H. Spalding.

Spalding offered many ornamental lighting devices, including girandoles and candelabra, along with lanterns and lamps for all kinds of fuels (also see Making a Two-Wick Camphene Lamp).

Spalding’s downtown Tremont Row offices and “manufactory” on Adams Street supplied camphene to Boston’s expanding population.

Whale Oil, Rock Oil, and Gaslight

The cost of whale oil ranged from $1.30 a gallon to $2.50 a gallon ($46.61 a gallon to $93.47 a gallon in 2024 dollars). Lard oil was about 90 cents a gallon. More popular was the manufactured “coal oil,” a fuel refined from coal that cost about 50 cents a gallon, but it was sooty and yielded a low-quality light.

Rock oil had been patented in 1854 by a Canadian physician and geologist, Abraham Gesner, who named his lamp fuel kerosene. Most people called it coal oil. A factory in Long Island, New York, soon began producing and selling Gesner’s new product.

In larger cities, public street gaslights already burned a “manufactured gas” made by distilling tar and wood. Baltimore, Maryland, lit the first U.S. public gas street lamp in 1817 at a ceremony one block from city hall.

In 1836, the newly formed Philadelphia Gas Works operated a “gasification” plant that manufactured illuminating gaslight from refined coal that was piped to 46 street lamps.

But for cheap, bright household lighting, many Americans still bought a two-wick lamp fueled with camphene. The unusual lamps had burners with long wick tubes set at angles to burn separately, a design many believed helped lower the risk of “flash fires.” Metal caps were placed over the tubes to extinguish the flames (considered safer than blowing them out).

Alcohol used in camphene was an important mainstay for distilleries, with many selling 30 percent to 80 percent of their output to the lamp fuel market. Taverns aside, by 1860 distilleries were delivering at least 90 million gallons of alcohol per year to the lighting industry.

Camphene and a variety of burning fluid production and distribution systems were well established and with whale oil becoming increasingly expensive, the future looked bright, despite the occasional flash fires. Then, on August 27, 1859, Edwin L. Drake drilled America’s first commercial oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania.

Investors in “Drake’s Folly,” including George Bissell of the Seneca Oil Company of New Haven, Connecticut, learned from a Yale professor that oil could be refined into kerosene. Simple distillation of oil yielded kerosene that sold for about 50 cents a gallon, about the same price as camphene. Pennsylvania refineries sprang up using basic “tea kettle” stills with 40 gallons to 4,000 gallons per day capacity.

As inexpensive oil-based kerosene began overwhelming makers of camphene (and coal oil) at the start of the Civil War, a tax on alcohol extinguished the camphene lighting business along with the other burning fluids.

Whale Oil Myth

To help fund the Union Army, the Internal Revenue Act imposed a $2.08 per gallon tax on alcohol between 1862 and 1864. Intended as an excise tax on beverage alcohol only, the law did not specifically exempt industrial uses, including camphene, which was about 75 percent high-proof alcohol.

The tax on the alcohol in camphene rose to as high as two dollars per gallon, according to The Whale Oil Myth. “Early petroleum derivatives suddenly enjoyed a huge government price advantage. And that advantage was over camphene. Whale oil no longer mattered.”

Kerosene brought inexpensive light, but it is a common misconception that oil “saved the whales.”

A February 2022 article in Environmental History noted, “the U.S. government created the oil industry with a federal tax on fuels that had already been in competition with whale oil, especially alcohol, which was a necessary ingredient in camphene and burning fluids.”

Camphene, once favored, was soon forgotten in American households (Congress repealed the alcohol tax in 1906).

Fueling the Future

Today the home of an oil museum and park, the Drake well yielded hundreds of gallons of high-quality crude oil. Each gallon could be distilled into about three quarts of lamp fuel. The new product became interchangeably known as rock oil, coal oil, carbon oil, or kerosene (the 19th-century product is still used as rocket fuel).

An ad seeking agents to sell the Aladdin brand of kerosene lamps, circa 1900.

Following Drake’s 1859 historic discovery, Samuel Kier of Pittsburgh was his first customer — and the first person in the United States to refine oil for lamp fuel. He sold his higher-quality “Carbon Oil” at $1.50 per gallon.

After a drilling slowdown during the Civil War, the first oil boom towns appeared in northwestern Pennsylvania. Barges began moving 42-gallon oil barrels down Oil Creek to the Allegheny River and onto newly built refineries in Pittsburgh. Wooden derricks appeared, many with two-wicked oilfield lanterns called yellow dogs fueled with crude oil.

Within a few years, kerosene lamps illuminated almost every American home. Many new exploration and production companies prospered thanks to kerosene. Then, beginning in the 1880s, kerosene for lamps started to become obsolete as a new technology entered the marketplace.

Thomas Edison’s electric lights steadily began to replace kerosene lamps. Almost as quickly as kerosene extinguished camphene 20 years before, electric lighting dimmed kerosene’s future as consumers switched on electric lights. The loss of its principal product could have doomed America’s young petroleum industry.

Then, another radical invention became incredibly popular with consumers, not for lighting, but for transportation. “Horseless carriages” with internal combustion engines fueled by a petroleum product provided a new opportunity for the oil business (see Cantankerous Combustion – 1st U.S. Auto Show).

With diminishing demand for kerosene, demand for gasoline transformed America’s oil exploration, production, and transportation companies. Consumer demand for a formerly discarded byproduct of kerosene distillation came at an especially good time for Texas wildcatters.

In 1901, the giant Spindletop Hill oilfield was discovered near Beaumont. The modern petroleum age arrived. 

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Recommended Reading:  Oil Lamps The Kerosene Era In North America (1978); Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry (2009). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

_______________________

The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support this energy education website, subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. 

Citation Information – Article Title: “Camphene to Kerosene Lamps.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/products/camphene-to-kerosene-lamps. Last Updated: March 2, 2026. Original Published Date: April 29, 2017.

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When most Americans could only afford illumination by candles early in the 20th century, kerosene brought light as an inexpensive lamp fuel, significantly impacting daily life before electricity. But often overlooked is the role of kerosene in powering appliances in rural American households and in remote parts of the world.

In 1910, the U.S. Census Bureau established 2,500 as the population threshold to be counted as urban. Many of the new, fast-growing cities already offered technologies like manufactured “city gas” (see History of Con Edison) and electricity.

As America’s urban population centers grew, they provided infrastructure-dependent utilities the abundance of proximate consumers needed to be profitable. By 1920, city dwellers outnumbered the rural population, where farmers and small towns continued to depend on kerosene (see Camphene to Kerosene Lamps). Across these scattered communities, kerosene lamps would continue burning for decades as electric lights remained only a distant possibility.

Founded in 1907 by Carl Jost for manufacturing kerosene-operated fans, Jost’s Fan Supply and Engineering Company has endured — but no longer makes fans.

Patented and named kerosene in 1854 by Canadian Abraham Gesner, “rock oil” replaced camphene, burning fluid, and other illuminants. Demand for oil to make kerosene led to the birth of the U.S. petroleum industry in 1859 (see First American Oil Well).

Kerosene as a lamp fuel replaced camphene (see Making a Two-Wick Lamp) and volatile burning fluids. It remained the principal product in the Standard Oil Company’s extensive distribution network until supplanted by gasoline in 1917 (see Cantankerous Combustion — First U.S. Auto Show).

“The Wonder Fan” could be fueled with kerosene, alcohol, manufactured “city gas,” or natural gas. The cooling effect of moving air exceeded the minuscule temperature rise from the burner.

As natural gas increasingly replaced manufactured gas in cities (see Illuminating Gaslight), the kerosene business also faded with the spread of electric lighting. Nationwide electrification — only reaching 3.2 percent in 1925 — would reach 90 percent by 1950.

Stoves, Irons, and Icy Balls

As early as 1901, Standard Oil partnered with Perfection Stove Company to increase consumption of kerosene by users who lived out “in the country.”

Detail from an early 1900s Standard Oil Company ad promoting its kerosene-fueled “New Perfection Oil Cookware” with four burners.

Perfection sold 10 million kerosene-burning stoves between 1905 and 1915 (see Standard Oil and the Kerosene Stove). Cumulative sales exceeded 8 million by 1922. Wood and coal-burning cast iron stoves became obsolete and fodder for wartime scrap-metal drives.

The Monitor Sad Iron Company of Big Prairie, Ohio, also sought to reach farm homes with petroleum products (see Ironing with Gasoline). The company patented and manufactured kerosene and gasoline-burning flatirons.

The gasoline-fueled “Self-Heating Sad Iron” sold for $3.50 and brought easier ironing to households without electrical service.

By 1920, Monitor had achieved cumulative sales of 850,000. In the 1930s, the company added new branding (Royal) and three additional patents until going out of business in 1954.

“Refrigeration — is possible now WITHOUT ELECTRICITY — at a cost so low that about 2¢ a day covers it everywhere,” proclaimed Crosley Radio Corporation in 1928.

Manufactured in Cincinnati, Ohio, more than twenty thousand Icy Balls were sold in the first year (see Icy Ball — Kerosene Ice Maker). The evaporative refrigeration device sold for $80 – about $1,522 in 2026 dollars.

Stirling’s Hot Air Engine

Perhaps the most enduring of all these unusual adaptations to life without electricity was based on an 1816 patent for a closed-cycle, reciprocating, external heat engine. Envisioned on an industrial scale by Scottish inventor Robert Stirling, it could not overtake steam engines’ grip on the industrial revolution.

In Bombay (Mumbai), India, engineer Carl Jost downsized Stirling’s idea to create a kerosene-burning table fan for the vast, underdeveloped market in Asia. In 1907, he founded Jost’s Fan Supply and Engineering Company Limited for manufacturing kerosene-operated fans.

“People often point out the contradiction of using a fan run by a heater for cooling, but the personal cooling effect of moving air much exceeds the miniscule temperature rise from a small flame,” noted Peter Lynn in a 2023 article, “Jost Hot Air Engine Fan,” for the Roger Mahan Heritage Centre.

A circa 1920 Jost’s fan ad featured desk and floor kerosene-burning models for the Asian market.

“There were many manufacturers of hot air engine (Stirling cycle) fans. Some Indian and Pakistani models were still being made in the late 20th century,” Lynn added. The wick-type burner was very similar to those commonly used for kerosene lamps.

Jost’s Engineering Company manufactured and widely exported these curiously named “Radio Fans.” By 1915, a Chicago company began shipping its own versions of the Jost fan to rural America. Lake Breeze Motor Company “Wonder Fans” came to distant customers who had access to “Kerosene, Alcohol, or Gas (City or Natural.)”

These Sterling cycle engine fans were manufactured by the William J.H. Strong Company, and advertisements proclaimed them to be “without wires, springs, batteries or trouble” — eight hours of cooling for only a penny’s worth of kerosene and no electricity needed.

The Stirling motor efficiently spun tabletop fan blades as mechanical power came from two synchronized pistons driven by expansion and contraction of heated air in a closed system. Some called it a “caloric engine,” but regardless of nomenclature — no electricity was required.

The variety of table-model and floor-model Wonder Fans included the Model B, a floor-standing, 16-inch-bladed fan that sold for $19.50. The Model C was designed to operate on alcohol or natural gas.

In the West Indies marketplace, “KY-KO” table fans by the Ice Stove Company competed with similar kerosene-operated fans by the East India Company and London’s Model Manufacturing Company.

Meanwhile, marketing kerosene fans overseas, the East India Company and London’s Model Manufacturing Company added their versions to the marketplace. Model Manufacturing’s “Ky-Yo” fan was “remarkably resilient and long-lasting and continued in use until the 1930s,” according to Hot Air Ky-Yo Fan. One pint of fuel lasted 10 hours.

“If you were sent to the Northwest frontier in the days of the Raj, or tried to keep order in the Persian Gulf, an essential for your comfort would have been your portable Ky-Ko fan powered by a hot air engine fueled by paraffin,” declared a Ky-Yo kerosene fan promotion. In British slang, KYKO is an abbreviation meaning “keep your knickers on” — a way of telling someone to stay calm or be patient.

Electricity hastened the end of kerosene fans and the Lake Breeze Motor Company of Chicago failed in 1919, but Carl Jost’s company has continued as Jost’s Engineering Company Limited, Mumbai, India. It no longer makes kerosene fans.

Kerosene Radio

In the Soviet Union, another application was found for kerosene-lamp power.

Designed for use in the Middle East, the Soviet Union produced an efficient portable radio powered by a kerosene lamp and “Thermo-electro Generator” (thermocouple), according to a December 1958 article in Radio & TV News.

A “Russian Receiver Powered by Kerosene Lamp” was featured on page 37 of the August 1958 Radio & TV News — “the world’s leading electronics magazine.” The article reported a “subsidized set built for Middle East use operates for 8 to 16 hours on about one quart of fuel.”

Although preserved examples of the kerosene-operated Russian radio are hard to find, antiques and reproductions of Jost’s fans, Perfection stoves, sad irons, and Crosley Ice Balls can be found on eBay.

A 1920s Crosley Radio Corporation Icy Ball — complete with “First Refrigerator Evaporative” cabinet — in 2026 was offered priced at $1,495 or best offer with the seller describing it as a “Wonderful Find, Best Original I have Seen, Truly a museum piece.”

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Recommended Reading: Oil Lamps The Kerosene Era In North America (1978); Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry (2009); Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (2004). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

_______________________

The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support this energy education website, subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. 

Citation Information – Article Title: “Cool Kerosene Fans.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/products/cool-kerosene-fans. Last Updated: March 11, 2026. Original Published Date: March 11, 2026.

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Only three percent of U.S. farms had electricity in 1925, according to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

For most of rural America in the early 20th century, kerosene lamps extended the day. On some farms, battery-powered radios brought news and entertainment at night. In 1927, Crosley Radio Company reported sales of $18 million — making it the largest radio manufacturer in the world. The company marketing its radios with the slogan, “You’re There With A Crosley.”

Founded in the early 1920s by Powel Crosley Jr., the Cincinnati-based corporation became known for innovative engineering.

Production of Crosley Radio’s Icy Ball refrigerator began in 1928, and the Icy Ball sold for about $80, complete with a 4.25 cubic foot cabinet.

Crosley, sometimes called “The Henry Ford of Radio,” would expand the company into manufacturing automobiles, aircraft, and home appliances. 

He also recognized a lucrative market awaited in the millions of farm homes lacking electricity, not just for radio, but for his company’s first venture into refrigeration.

Crosley Icy Ball — Heated Refrigeration

Built on earlier patents developed for absorption refrigeration and assigned to Crosley, the radio company began production of a new appliance, promoting the device’s simplicity, durability, and economy.

With no moving parts, the Crosley Icy Ball (or Icyball) was designed to chill by using intermittent heat absorption with a water ammonia mixture as the refrigerant. Once “charged” by heating for 90 minutes with a cup of kerosene, an Icy Ball could provide a day or more of refrigeration, plus a few ice cubes. No electricity required.

Crosley Radio Corporation bought the rights to the “icy ball” refrigeration idea from David Keith of Canada, who had applied for a U.S. patent in June 1927.

Crosley Radio’s new refrigerating appliance was simple to operate, much like Standard Oil’s “Perfection” stove and similar kerosene stoves, along with the Monitor Sad Iron Company’s popular gasoline iron. 

Kerosene fans also once cooled rural America. Several designs used a “heat engine” for a cooling effect by moving air that exceeded the temperature rise from the burner. 

“Especially for women in rural and farm households, kerosene provided an important bridge fuel to the newer age of gas and electricity. To ignore it is to ignore what was for many an important introduction to modern times,” explained Mark Aldrich in Agricultural History Journal, Winter 2020, “The Rise and Decline of the Kerosene Kitchen.”

Heated with a kerosene stove, the Crosley icy ball chilled by using intermittent heat absorption with a water ammonia mixture as the refrigerant.

Crosley Radio’s instructions for the “Icyball Refrigerator” stated, “The Perfection kerosene stove has been designed especially for the Icyball and is recommended.”

Crosley Radio Corp. sold thousands of ice makers, including an Icy Ball cabinet refrigerator. Image from 1920s operating instructions.

Production of the Crosley Icy Ball began in 1928, and it sold for about $80, complete with a 4.25 cubic foot cabinet. Crosley Radio declared sales of 22,000 for the refrigeration appliance in the first year alone.

“Refrigeration – everyday necessity to household economy and family health – is possible now WITHOUT ELECTRICITY – at a cost so low that about 2 cents a day covers it everywhere,” proclaimed company advertisements.

Rural Electrification Act

The New Deal’s Rural Electrification Act of 1936 empowered the federal government to make low-cost loans to farmers bringing electricity to rural America.

Among the most successful of President Franklin Roosevelt’s programs, the loans allowed thousands of farms to exploit the labor savings that electric lights, tools, and appliances could bring. Electrification grew from only 3.2 percent in 1925, to 90 percent by 1950.

Crosley adapted to the electrified market and made an even bigger hit with its 1933 refrigerator, the “Shelvador” Model D-35, which featured the unheard of innovation of door shelving and automatic interior lighting within its three and a half cubic feet. More electric appliances followed, and for decades the company remained preeminent in refrigerators.

Electrification of rural America rendered Crosley Icy Balls obsolete and production ended in 1938, but Crosley Radio endured.

In 2026, Crosley Ice Balls could be found for sale on eBay, including a 1920s “First Refrigerator Evaporative” cabinet priced at $1,495 or best offer, with the seller describing it as a “Wonderful Find, Best Original I have Seen, Truly a museum piece.”

Smithsonian Icy Ball Exhibit

Powel Crosley Jr. bought the rights to the icy ball refrigeration design from David Keith of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, who had applied for a patent in June 1927 and received it on December 24, 1929 (No. 1,740,737). Crosley Radio improved the device while acquiring additional patents.

Crosley Radio Corporation sold thousands of Icy Ball refrigeration appliances (with ice maker) before production ended in 1938.

Although not on display, a Crosley Icy Ball has been preserved at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Refrigeration artifact (No. 1988.0609.01) was tested in 1998 and successfully completed a heat charge cycle, producing a temperature of 18 degrees Fahrenheit.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support this energy education website, subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. 

Citation Information – Article Title: “Crosley Icy Ball Refrigerator.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/oil-almanac/crosley-icy-ball-refrigerator. Last Updated: March 9, 2026. Original Published Date: October 14, 2023.

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The world’s first synthetic fiber was the petroleum product “Nylon 6,” discovered in 1935 by a DuPont chemist who produced the polymer from chemicals found in oil.

DuPont Corporation foresaw the future of “strong as steel” artificial fibers. The chemical conglomerate had been founded in 1802 as a Wilmington, Delaware, manufacturer of gunpowder. The company would become a global giant after its scientists created durable and versatile products like nylon, rayon, and lucite.

“Women show off their nylon pantyhose to a newspaper photographer, circa 1942,” noted Jennifer S. Li in “The Story of Nylon – From a Depressed Scientist to Essential Swimwear.” Photo by R. Dale Rooks.

The world’s first synthetic fiber — nylon — was discovered on February 28, 1935, by a former Harvard professor working at a DuPont research laboratory. Called Nylon 6 by scientists, the revolutionary carbon-based product came from chemicals found in petroleum.

Chemists named the fiber Nylon 6 because chains of adipic acid and hexamethylene diamine each contained six carbon atoms per molecule.

Professor Wallace Carothers had experimented with artificial materials for more than six years. He previously discovered neoprene rubber (commonly used in wetsuits) and made major contributions to understanding polymers — large molecules composed of long chains of repeating chemical structures.

Polymer Chains

Carothers, 32, created fibers when he combined the chemicals amine, hexamethylene diamine, and adipic acid. His experiments formed polymer chains using a process in which individual molecules joined together with water as a byproduct. But the fibers were weak.

A PBS series, A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries, in 1998 noted Carothers’ breakthrough came when he realized, “the water produced by the reaction was dropping back into the mixture and getting in the way of more polymers forming. He adjusted his equipment so that the water was distilled and removed from the system. It worked!”

DuPont named the petroleum product nylon — although chemists called it Nylon 6 because the adipic acid and hexamethylene diamine each contain six carbon atoms per molecule.

“Until now, all good toothbrushes were made with animal bristles,” noted a 1938 magazine ad.

Each man-made molecule consists of 100 or more repeating units of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms, strung in a chain. A single filament of nylon may have a million or more molecules, each taking some of the strain when the filament is stretched.

There’s disagreement about how the product name originated at DuPont.

“As to the word ‘nylon,’ it’s actually quite arbitrary. DuPont itself has stated that originally the name was intended to be No-Run (that’s run as in the sense of the compound chain of the substance unraveling), but at the time there was no real justification for the claim, so it needed to be changed,” noted Chris Nickson in a 2017 website post, Where Does the Name Nylon Originate?

Toothbrush Bristles

The first commercial use of this revolutionary petroleum product was for toothbrushes.

On February 24, 1938, the Weco Products Company of Chicago, Illinois, began selling its new “Dr. West’s Miracle-Tuft” — the earliest toothbrush to use synthetic DuPont nylon bristles.

First used for toothbrush bristles, nylon women’s stockings were widely promoted by DuPont in 1948.

Americans will soon brush their teeth with nylon — instead of hog bristles, declared an article in the New York Times. “Until now, all good toothbrushes were made with animal bristles,” explained a 1938 Weco Products advertisement in Life magazine.

“Today, Dr. West’s new Miracle-Tuft is a single exception,” the ad proclaimed. “It is made with EXTON, a unique bristle-like filament developed by the great DuPont laboratories and produced exclusively for Dr. West’s.”

Pricing its toothbrush at 50 cents, the Weco Products Company guaranteed “no bristle shedding.” Johnson & Johnson of New Brunswick, New Jersey, will introduce a competing nylon-bristle toothbrush in 1939.

Nylon Stockings

Although DuPont patented nylon in 1935, it was not officially announced to the public until October 27, 1938, in New York City.

A DuPont vice president unveiled the synthetic fiber — not to a scientific society or industry association — but to 3,000 Women’s Club members gathered at the site of the upcoming 1939 New York World’s Fair.

During WWII, nylon was used as a substitute for silk in parachutes.

“He spoke in a session entitled ‘We Enter the World of Tomorrow,’ which was keyed to the theme of the forthcoming fair, the World of Tomorrow,” explained DuPont historian David A. Hounshell in a 1988 book.

The petroleum product was an instant hit, especially as a replacement for silk in hosiery. DuPont built a full-scale nylon plant in Seaford, Delaware, and began commercial production in late 1939. The company purposefully did not register “nylon” as a trademark — choosing to allow the word to enter the American vocabulary as a synonym for “stockings.”

Women’s nylon stockings appeared for the first time at Gimbels Department Store on May 15, 1940. World War II would remove the polymer hosiery from stores since it was needed for parachutes and other vital supplies.

Nylon would become far and away the biggest money-maker in the history of DuPont. The powerful material from lab research led company executives to derive formulas for growth, according to Hounshell in The Nylon Drama.

“By putting more money into fundamental research, DuPont would discover and develop ‘new nylons,’ that is, new proprietary products sold to industrial customers and having the growth potential of nylon,” Hounshell explained in his 1988 book.

Carothers did not live to see the widespread application of his work — in consumer goods such as toothbrushes, fishing lines, luggage, and lingerie, or in special uses such as surgical thread, parachutes, or pipes — nor the powerful effect it had in launching a whole era of synthetics.

Devastated by the sudden death of his favorite sister in early 1937, Wallace Carothers committed suicide in April of that year. The DuPont Company would name its research facility after him.

The DuPont website notes that the invention of nylon changed the way people dressed worldwide and made the term ‘silk stocking’ obsolete (once an epithet directed at the wealthy elite). Nylon’s success encouraged DuPont and other companies to adopt long-term strategies for products developed from research.

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Recommended Reading: The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History (2019); Enough for One Lifetime: Wallace Carothers, Inventor of Nylon (2005); The Nylon Drama (1988). Your Amazon purchases benefit the American Oil & Gas Historical Society; as an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

_______________________

The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support AOGHS to help maintain this energy education website, a monthly email newsletter, This Week in Oil and Gas History News, and expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Nylon, a Petroleum Polymer.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/products/petroleum-product-nylon-fiber. Last Updated: February 19, 2026. Original Published Date: February 23, 2014.

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General Motors scientists in 1921 discovered the anti-knock properties of tetraethyl lead as an additive to gasoline. By 1923, many American motorists would be driving into service stations and saying, “Fill ‘er up with Ethyl.” 

Early internal combustion engines frequently suffered from “knocking,” the out-of-sequence detonation of the gasoline-air mixture in a cylinder. The constant shock added to exhaust valve wear and frequently damaged engines. 

Automobiles powered with gasoline had been the least popular models at the November 1900 first U.S. auto show in New York City’s Madison Square Garden.

General Motors chemists Thomas Midgely Jr. and Charles F. Kettering tested many gasoline additives, including arsenic.

On December 9, 1921, after five years of lab work to find an additive to eliminate pre-ignition “knock” problems of gasoline, General Motors researchers Thomas Midgely Jr. and Charles Kettering discovered the anti-knock properties of tetraethyl lead.

Early experiments at GM examined the properties of knock suppressors such as bromine, iodine, and tin — comparing these to new additives such as arsenic, sulfur, silicon, and lead.

The world’s first anti-knock gasoline containing a tetra-ethyl lead compound went on sale at the Refiners Oil Company service station in Dayton, Ohio. A bolt-on “Ethylizer” can be seen running vertically alongside the visible reservoir. Photo courtesy Kettering/GMI Alumni Foundation.

When the two chemists synthesized tetraethyl lead and tried it in their one-cylinder laboratory engine, the knocking abruptly disappeared. Fuel economy also improved. Ethyl vastly improved gasoline performance.

“Ethylizers” debut in Dayton

Although being diluted to a ratio of one part per thousand, the lead additive yielded gasoline without the loud, power-robbing knock. With other automotive scientists watching, the first car tank filled with leaded gas took place on February 2, 1923, at the Refiners Oil Company service station in Dayton, Ohio.

In the beginning, GM provided Refiners Oil Company and other service stations special equipment, simple bolt-on adapters called “Ethylizers” to meter the proper proportion of the new additive.

“By the middle of this summer you will be able to purchase at approximately 30,000 filling stations in various parts of the country a fluid that will double the efficiency of your automobile, eliminate the troublesome motor knock, and give you 100 percent greater mileage,” Popular Science Monthly reported in 1924.

By the late 1970s, public health concerns resulted in the phase-out of tetraethyl lead in gasoline, except for aviation fuel.

Anti-knock gasoline containing a tetraethyl lead compound also proved vital for aviation engines during World War II, even as danger from the lead content increasingly became apparent.

Powering Victory in World War II 

Aviation fuel technology was still in its infancy in the 1930s. The properties of tetraethyl lead proved vital to the Allies during World War II. Advances in aviation fuel increased power and efficiency, resulting in the production of 100-octane aviation gasoline shortly before the war.

Phillips Petroleum — later ConocoPhillips — was involved early in aviation fuel research and had already provided high-gravity gasoline for some of the first mail-carrying airplanes after World War I.

Phillips Petroleum produced tetraethyl leaded aviation fuels from high-quality oil found in Osage County, Oklahoma, oilfields.

Phillips Petroleum produced aviation fuels before it produced automotive fuels. The company’s gasoline came from the high-quality oil produced from Oklahoma’s Seminole oilfields and the 1917 Osage County oil boom.

Although the additive’s danger to public health was underestimated for decades, tetraethyl lead has remained an ingredient of 100-octane “avgas” for piston-engine aircraft.

Tetraethyl Lead’s Deadly Side

Leaded gasoline was extremely dangerous from the beginning, according to Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer. “GM and Standard Oil had formed a joint company to manufacture leaded gasoline, the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation,” she noted in a January 2013 article. Research focused solely on improving the formula, not on the danger of the lead additive.

A 1932 magazine advertisement promoted the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation fuel additive as a way to improve high-compression engine performance.

“The companies disliked and frankly avoided the lead issue,” Blum wrote in “Looney Gas and Lead Poisoning: A Short, Sad History” at Wire.com. “They’d deliberately left the word out of their new company name to avoid its negative image.”

In 1924, dozens were sickened, and five employees of the Standard Oil Refinery in Bayway, New Jersey, died after they handled the new gasoline additive.

By May 1925, the U.S. Surgeon General called a national tetraethyl lead conference, Blum reported. An investigative task force was formed. Researchers concluded there was ”no reason to prohibit the sale of leaded gasoline” as long as workers were well protected during the manufacturing process.

So great was the additive’s potential to improve engine performance, the author notes, by 1926 the federal government approved continued production and sale of leaded gasoline. “It was some fifty years later — in 1986 — that the United States formally banned lead as a gasoline additive,” Blum added.

By the early 1950s, American geochemist Clair Patterson discovered the toxicity of tetraethyl lead; phaseout of its use in gasoline began in 1976 and was completed by 1986. In 1996, EPA Administrator Carol Browner declared, “The elimination of lead from gasoline is one of the great environmental achievements of all time.”

Learn more about high-octane aviation fuel in Flight of the Woolaroc.

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Recommended Reading: An Illustrated Guide to Gas Pumps (2008); Unleaded: How Changing Our Gasoline Changed Everything (2021). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

_______________________

The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website, expand historical research, and extend public outreach. For annual sponsorship information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All right reserved.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Ethyl Anti-Knock Gas.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/products/tetraethyl-lead-gasoline. Last Updated: December 4, 2025. Original Published Date: December 7, 2014.

The post Ethyl Anti-Knock Gas appeared first on American Oil & Gas Historical Society.

Research scientists in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in 1951 discovered how to make a durable, high-density polyethylene, and the marketing executives at their oil and natural gas company named it Marlex. But Phillips Petroleum sales reps searched in vain for buyers of the new plastic until the Wham-O toy company found it ideal for making hoops and flying platters.

Prompted by a post-World War II boom in demand for plastics, Phillips Petroleum Company invested $50 million to bring its own miracle product — Marlex — to market in 1954. With a high melting point and tensile strength, the synthetic polymer would stand out from the company’s thousands of patents.

To make Hula Hoops and Frisbees, Arthur Melin, right, and his Wham-O Company partner Richard Kerr, left, chose Marlex — the world’s first high-density polyethylene plastic. Photo courtesy Wham-O inc.

Phillips Petroleum gambled that its new plastic would be perfect for all manner of emerging products trying to keep up with consumer demand. With millions of dollars already committed, company executives and Wall Street investors expected immediate results from the unusual lab product.

Fun with Polyethylene

Marlex, a high-density polyethylene, was created by Phillips research chemists J. Paul Hogan and Robert L. Banks, who had been researching gasoline additives. In their experiments, Hogan and Banks studied catalysts.

Few companies knew what to do with Phillips Petroleum’s new plastic. Demand for “Marlex” would come from “the undisputed granddaddy of American fads.” This 1958 Associated Press photo shows Los Angeles children demonstrating their skills for “Art Linkletter’s House Party” show.

“In June 1951, they set up an experiment in which they modified their original catalyst (nickel oxide) to include small amounts of chromium oxide,” noted the American Chemical Society in 1999. Their work was expected to produce low-molecular-weight hydrocarbons.

“As Paul Hogan recalls it, he was standing outside the laboratory when Banks came out saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got something new coming in our kettle that we’ve never seen before.’  Running inside, they saw that the nickel oxide had produced the expected liquids. But the chromium had produced a white, solid material. Hogan and Banks were looking at a new polymer — crystalline polypropylene.”

A few years later, when Phillips introduced high-density polyethylene in 1954, under the brand name Marlex, “company marketing executives were wildly optimistic, expecting that the product would be a big hit and that Phillips would not be able to keep it on the shelves.”

The durability and high melting point of Marlex would make it useful in hospitals.

Unlike another synthetic material introduced decades earlier by DuPont (see Nylon, A Petroleum Polymer), the transition from laboratory to mass production proved far more difficult than anticipated.

When customers failed to materialize, the dingy, inconsistently sized, off-specification pellets accumulated. Phillips Petroleum found itself with no buyers and warehouses growing full of Marlex. The Bartlesville company searched for new customers.

Relief came from an unexpected source.

Petroleum Product Toy

The Wham-O Company was born in a California garage in 1948 when Richard Knerr and Arthur “Spuds” Melin began making 75-cent wooden slingshots using a jigsaw they purchased on an installment plan.

The northwestern Pennsylvania community of Titusville in August 2009 celebrated the 150th anniversary of the first U.S. oil discovery drilled nearby. The sesquicentennial parade included a float from the Oil Creek Plastics Company. Photo by Bruce Wells.

The company’s name came from its first product, the “Wham-O Slingshot,” and the sound made when a pebble hit a target. As its mail-order business grew, Wham-O in 1957 added a flying disc toy, the “Pluto Platter” — today’s Frisbee — to their product line. The next year, they introduced a simple Australian amusement, the “Hula-Hoop.”

“The great obsession of 1958 — the undisputed granddaddy of American fads…the hoop rewrote toy merchandising history,” noted Richard Johnson in his 1985 book American Fads. When the phenomenal hoop craze ignited, Wham-O needed plastic tubing. A lot of it.

The Wham-O company first used a W.R. Grace & Company product called Grex — a petroleum-based plastic produced in Pennsylvania. In Titusville, birthplace of the U.S. oil industry in 1859, the Skyline Plastics Company worked overtime extruding Grex into the plastic Hula-Hoops as the craze swirled across the nation.

Retired Titusville plant superintendent Robert Poux, 83, remembers 125 employees working three shifts, seven days a week, just to keep up. Wham-O sold more than 25 million Hula-Hoops in the first four months (at $1.98 each). They sold more than 100 million in two years.

“Extruded tubing is desirable because it may be economically fabricated in continuous lengths,” Arthur Melin noted in his patent application describing a hoop weighing 10 ounces.

Wham-O’s nationwide daily production ultimately peaked at about 20,000 per day. There soon was not enough Grex, and Phillips Petroleum’s once-ignored miracle polypropylene, Marlex, was suddenly very much in demand. Hula-Hoop plastic-extruding plants sprang up in Chicago, Newark, and Toronto, Canada.

Resolving initial manufacturing problems after the completely unanticipated demand for Marlex, Phillips positioned itself as a prime source for durable plastics. New industrial, medical, and consumer product uses ensured Phillips Petroleum’s $50 million investment in polymer research would be rewarded many times over.

And as the Hula-Hoop fad diminished, Wham-O continued using tons of Marlex — for the production of Frisbees.

The Wham-O Frisbee

In 1948, a California newspaper reported, “Two local men, pooling resources after the words ‘flying saucers’ shocked the world a year ago, have invented a new, patented plastic toy shaped like the originally reported saucer.”

Walter Morrison and Warren Franscioni of San Louis Obispo formed Partners in Plastic (Pipco) and sold their “Flyin’ Saucers” for 25 cents each. By 1955, Morrison had gone on his own to sell his “Pluto Platters” — the basic design of today’s Frisbee — when Wham-O acquired the rights. 

Wham-O began producing its own plastic Frisbees on January 13, 1957. Morrison would receive more than one million dollars in royalties for his flying platter invention.

Wham-O began producing Frisbees in January 1957. A decade later, an improved “professional” Frisbee included the “Rings of Headrick” for added stability. Detail from U.S. Patent No. 3,359,678. Image courtesy the Disc Golf Association, Watsonville, California.

“Sales soared for the toy, due to Wham-O’s clever marketing of Frisbee playing as a new sport,” says Mary Bellis in her article, “First Flight of the Frisbee.” In 1967, New Jersey high school students invented Ultimate Frisbee, a cross between football, soccer, and basketball.

According to Bellis, it was also 1967 that Wham-O’s Ed Headrick patented an improved design that became today’s Frisbee, with its band of raised ridges — called the Rings of Headrick — that stabilized flight “as opposed to the wobbly flight of its predecessor, the Pluto Platter.”

According to the Disc Golf Association, Watsonville, California, Disc Golf began with “Steady” Ed Headrick, the father of disc golf and modern day disc sports.

Phillips chemist Paul Hogan was featured in the Phillips Petroleum Company Museum (closed in 2025) exhibit of products made of high-density polyethylene, the plastic he and fellow chemist Robert Banks invented. Photo by Bruce Wells.

Today, because young people often fail to realize plastics are made from petroleum, many community oil and gas museums include these iconic toys in “petroleum products” exhibits.

Heroes of Chemistry

Phillips Petroleum Company chemists Paul Hogan and Robert Banks invented a way to make solid polymers (U.S. Patent No. 2,825,721) — and launched the modern world of plastics.

According to the American Chemical Society, “The two researchers found the catalyst that would transform ethylene and propylene into solid polymers. The plastics that resulted — crystalline polypropylene and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) — are now the core of a multibillion-dollar, global industry.”

When Paul Hogan died at age 92 on February 19, 2012, he was described by those who knew him as “a modest man who did not care to dwell on his many scientific achievements and accolades, Hogan’s name is found on more than 50 patents,” according to the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise.

Fellow research chemist Robert Banks (1921-1989) shared in many of the Phillips Petroleum accomplishments relating to high-density plastics. Prior to joining the oil company in 1946, Banks had been a process engineer at an aviation gasoline plant during World War II. 

In 1998, the American Chemical Society gave Banks (posthumously) and Hogan a “Heroes of Chemistry” award for the use of petrochemicals in the automotive industries. Their discovery of polypropylene and high-density polyethylene was designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark in 1999. 

Robert L. Banks and J. Paul Hogan were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2001.

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Recommended Reading:  Phillips, The First 66 Years (1983); American Fads (1985); Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century (1996); Enough for One Lifetime: Wallace Carothers, Inventor of Nylon (2005). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

_______________________

The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Join today as an annual AOGHS supporter. Help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Petroleum Product Hoopla.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/products/petroleum-product-hoopla. Last Updated: January 16, 2026. Original Published Date: February 3, 2011.

The post Wham-O and Petroleum Product Hoopla appeared first on American Oil & Gas Historical Society.

In the early 1900s, a foundry in Cleveland, Ohio, began manufacturing and selling an alternative to coal or wood-burning cast iron stoves. Thanks to a marketing partnership with Standard Oil Company, millions of rural kitchens would cook with kerosene-burning stoves.

America’s energy future changed after 1859 when a new “coal oil” (kerosene) was refined from petroleum purposefully extracted from wells drilled near Oil Creek, Pennsylvania.

A Cleveland foundry president in 1901 approached John D. Rockefeller about a new, kerosene-fueled alternative to cast iron home stoves like this one.

The improved and inexpensive lamp fuel would soon replace dangerous burning fluids, including volatile camphene. The new “Oil Region” of northwestern Pennsylvania became overrun with drilling as “black gold” oilfield discoveries marked the birth of a chaotic exploration and production industry.

After decades of fierce competition, John D. Rockefeller emerged and brought stability to petroleum markets — often at the expense of independent producers. By the turn of the 20th century, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil empire controlled more than 90 percent of all the petroleum produced, refined and sold in the United States.

Detail from a Standard Oil Company of New York (Socony) ad promoting its kerosene-fueled “New Perfection Oil Cookware” with four burners.

Kerosene, a future rocket fuel, quickly became the nation’s preferred illuminant and Standard Oil’s principal product. Rockefeller’s business practices made enemies but reduced the cost of kerosene for millions of consumers.

America’s first automobile show in November 1900 barely hinted that demand for “gasolene” might someday exceed that of kerosene. Gasoline at that time was just a low-value by-product of kerosene refining. In 1917, U.S. refineries produced more gasoline than kerosene for the first time as auto registrations reached almost 5 million (with another 400,000 commercial, agricultural, and military vehicles).

Standard Oil’s kerosene sales also eroded because of Thomas Edison’s incandescent bulbs with George Westinghouse’s alternating current illuminating more homes. For electric companies, economies of scale were to be found in metropolitan markets where kerosene was already being challenged by manufactured gas — “Town Gas.”

No business case could be made for profitably delivering electricity to rural America. Farmers continued to rely on kerosene along with other Standard Oil petroleum products.  An Ohio entrepreneur then came up with an innovative alternative to cast iron stoves.

 Standard Oil’s Kerosene Network

In 1901, Francis E. Drury, owner of the Cleveland Foundry Company, approached John D. Rockefeller with a partnership proposal. Drury’s plan would get Standard Oil into the business of selling his company’s alternative to the wood or coal-burning cast iron stove — a kitchen stove fueled with kerosene.

Thanks to early marketing help from 300 Standard Oil salesmen, a foundry in Cleveland, Ohio, manufactured millions of “Perfection” stoves that burned kerosene.

A few years earlier, Drury and partner Henry Parsons Crowell had explored the idea of a “lamp stove,” according to History of the Perfection Stove Company. “The two men discussed the practicability of such an item. A patent was applied for; the Cleveland Foundry Company began building and then selling the stove. The ‘Perfection Stove Company’ was born.”

Drury wanted to change the old ways in the kitchen and the burdensome chores. He looked for “anything which will save the carrying up of coal, the carrying down of ashes, the noise and dust and dirt and odor and heat and hard labor and time consumed in attending to fires.” 

Drury believed that in unelectrified rural America, kerosene stoves would find many receptive customers, adding company’s invention would “do nothing short of revolutionizing the domestic life of the day.”

Since Standard Oil already served remote users with established kerosene-wagon delivery routes, every stop offered a potential point of sale for the new stove.  With this far-reaching distribution system, 300 company salesmen pitched the new “Perfection” branded stoves. 

The sales representatives urged replacing old iron stoves with the kerosene stove’s amazing advantages, including hours of labor savings and “emancipation from overheated kitchen drudgery in hot weather.”

Standard Oil promoted using its Pearl Oil kerosene “for the best results” in the Perfection stove. “Pearl Oil, the Standard Oil Company’s kerosene,” noted one advertisement, “a most convenient and economical fuel — without the dust and dirt of coal or wood.”

Cleveland Metal Products Company, which evolved from Drury’s earlier foundry,  manufactured and sold the New Perfection Oil Cook Stove. By 1922, more than 3 million Perfection kitchen stoves were used in U.S. homes.

The Cleveland Metal Products Company manufactured its New Perfection Oil Cook Stoves as the ideal replacement for coal-burning stoves. The appliance used circular burners with easily maintained special wicks (see a sample user’s manual).

“A Family Delight,” noted a Cleveland Metal Products advertisement that also encouraged readers, “Ask your dealer to demonstrate this high searing flame.”

By 1915, the Drury-Rockefeller partnership had sold millions of kerosene-burning stoves. Five years later, the number of gasoline-hungry vehicles on America’s mostly unpaved roadways reached almost nine million. Standard Oil’s response to increasing demand for gasoline prompted an amicable dissolution of the partnership.

Although Rockefeller’s business dealings brought controversy, the oil tycoon’s Standard Oil, “gave us time to build up a salesman organization,” Drury noted. “Through all our experiences with the Standard Oil Company acting as our distributors, our relations have been most cordial and profitable,” he explained in his autobiography.

The Cleveland Foundry, which also made kerosene-fueled heaters, in 1917 merged with Cleveland Metal Products Company and used that name before becoming Perfection Stove Company a few years later. By 1922, Drury’s company reached cumulative sales of more than 8 million kerosene-burning stoves, heaters, and ranges.

Thanks to the Standard Oil kerosene network and the innovative stove, Drury became a very wealthy Ohio businessman. He built a mansion on Cleveland’s fashionable Euclid Avenue, down the street from Rockefeller. The kerosene stove entrepreneur died in 1932, three years before President Roosevelt’s New Deal established the Rural Electrification Administration, which would electrify half of America by 1940.

Lehman’s of Kidron, Ohio, in 2025 offered its Amish-made Perfection Kerosene Cookstove With Oven, “designed to handle daily cooking for large Amish families” for $3,189, including brass burners with seamless ceramic chimneys, thick porcelain coatings, and a steel, one-gallon tank for the kerosene.

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Recommended Reading:  Oil Lamps The Kerosene Era In North America (1978); Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry (2009). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support this energy education website, subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. 

Citation Information – Article Title: “Standard Oil and Kerosene Stoves.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/products/standard-oil-and-the-kerosene-stove/. Last Updated: March 1, 2026. Original Published Date: January 23, 2023.

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As the U.S. centennial approached, President Ulysses S. Grant directed that Pennsylvania Avenue be paved with asphalt. By 1876, the president’s paving project using Trinidad asphalt covered about 54,000 square yards.

Pennsylvania Avenue was first paved in 1876-77 with bitumen imported from Trinidad. Thirty-one years later, a better asphalt derived from petroleum distillation was used to repave the famed pathway to the Capitol, above. Photo courtesy the Asphalt Institute.

“Brooms, lutes, squeegees and tampers were used in what was a highly labor intensive process. Only after the asphalt was dumped, spread, and smoothed by hand did the relatively sophisticated horse-drawn roller, and later the steam roller moved in to complete the job,” reported the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) in its 1992 publication, A Century of Progress: The History of Hot Mix Asphalt.

On December 22, 1875, President Grant delivered to Congress his administration’s “Report of the Commissioners Created by the Act Authorizing the Repavement of Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Three decades later, the famous road to the U.S. Capitol was repaved with new and much-improved asphalt made from petroleum.

Black Tops

The abundance of asphalt has made it unremarkable, yet without this residue from the petroleum refining process, bad roads may have delayed the nation’s economic progress in the 20th century.

Ninety-four percent of modern U.S. roads and streets are asphalt — variously known as blacktop, tarmac, macadam, plant mix, asphalt concrete, bituminous concrete, and hot mix asphalt.

Asphalt left over from oil refining presented an improved alternative to natural bitumen. Photo courtesy the Asphalt Institute.

In North America, the asphalt industry began as early as 1595 with imports from a naturally occurring bitumen lake found on the island of Trinidad, just off the northern coast of South America.

Sir Walter Raleigh first described the Trinidad lake as a “plain” of asphalt and used it to recaulk his ships. It was about 280 years before President Grant directed that Pennsylvania Avenue be paved with the same Trinidad asphalt.

Making Asphalt

The use of petroleum asphalt, a heavy byproduct from crude oil refining, presented a readily available alternative to imported bitumen. This refining process leftover offered an economic means of dramatically improving roadways.

Main Street in Desdemona, Texas, at the height of the 1918 oil boom following the nearby “Roaring Ranger” discovery one year earlier. Photo courtesy Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.

By 1902, the Texas Gulf Refining and Texas Refining companies produced asphalt, as did the Sun Oil Co. in Pennsylvania. The next year, Congress established a mechanical and chemical laboratory to test road materials. Within a decade, petroleum asphalt dominated the marketplace.

More than 55,000 automobiles traveled on the nation’s existing roads in 1904, and by 1910 the number of trucks and automobiles had risen to nearly 470,000, according to the Asphalt Institute’s Asphalt Magazine. Experiments began “mixing asphalt and heavy road oils with various sizes of aggregate.”

The application of “Topeka Mix” (asphalt and small stones) provided an enduring pavement for the first intercity highways.

The thousands of automobiles that began rolling off assembly lines after World War I needed more and better roads. Innovations in both producing and laying asphalt included mechanized spreaders and mixers — reducing, but never eliminating manual labor.

Asphalt Interstates

During World War II, runway surfaces had to handle larger and heavier loads, prompting innovation in asphalt composition and paving technology. Road building became a huge industry to accommodate America’s postwar boom.

Missouri launched the U.S. interstate system after “inking a deal for work on U.S. Route 66” now I-44 that stretches across south central Missouri as a corridor to the West Coast.

Responding to public demand, Congress passed the State Highway Act and allotted $51 billion to the states for road construction.

The Highway-Aid Act of 1956 provided 90 percent federal funding for a “system of interstate and defense highways” — the Eisenhower administration noted a need to efficiently evacuate major cities in the event of a nuclear attack. The Act made it possible for states to afford construction of the network of national limited-access highways, which would eventually reach more than 40,000 miles.

In August 1956, Missouri became the first state to award a contract with the new interstate construction funds, “inking a deal for work on U.S. Route 66 — now Interstate 44 — in  Laclede County,” noted the Missouri Department of Transportation.

“There is no question that the creation of the interstate highway system has been the most significant development in the history of transportation in the United States,” the state agency added. Advanced pavement materials now include compositions such as Open Graded Friction Course and Stone Matrix Asphalt, better known as “Superpave.”

In 2025, the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) estimated a total of 4.1 million miles of U.S. roads paved with a variety of bituminous surfaces. The estimate includes the National Highway System (NHS) of about 164,000 miles of highways, including interstates.

Established in 1995, the NHS includes routes considered vital for national defense and the economy. A small percentage of the total U.S. road network, it carries more than 40 percent of highway traffic and 75 percent of heavy truck traffic.

Asphalt comes from the bottom of the fractional distillation process, but its contribution to America’s mobility makes it one of the petroleum industry’s most important products. Every day, it passes largely unnoticed under millions of tires.

Also see America on the Move.

Asphalt Drip Experiment

Physicists at Trinity College Dublin photographed one of the most anticipated drips in science on July 11, 2013.

“After 69 years, one of the longest-running laboratory investigations in the world has finally captured the fall of a drop of tar pitch on camera for the first time,” noted the science journal Nature a few days later.

Begun in 1927, another “Pitch Drop Experiment” continues in Australia today. Photo courtesy University of Queensland.

Considered one of the longest-running laboratory investigations in the world, the pitch-drop experiment was set up in 1944 to demonstrate the high viscosity or low fluidity of pitch, a naturally occurring hydrocarbon also known as bitumen or asphalt.

Australian Drip

An even older “Pitch Drop Experiment” in Australia, which began in 1927, continues. It missed filming its latest drop in 2000 because the camera was offline, notes writer Richard Johnston. It should take seven to 13 years for a drop to form — but only a tenth of a second for it to fall.

Both experiments demonstrate the high viscosity of pitch — also known as bitumen or asphalt — a material that appears to be solid at room temperature but is flowing, albeit extremely slowly,” he explained. The Trinity College team has estimated the viscosity of the pitch in the region to be two million times more viscous than honey.

The Australian experiment continues; it has been running since 1927 at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. It is the world’s longest-running laboratory experiment, according to Guinness World Records. The pitch container has yielded nine drops — the ninth falling in 2014 — and another forming as of July 2025. The wait for the next drop continues at The Tenth Watch.

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Recommended Reading: A Century of Progress: The History of Hot Mix Asphalt (1992); Down the Asphalt Path: The Automobile and the American City (1994); A Photographic History of Ritchie County, West Virginia (1989). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

_______________________

The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Asphalt Paves the Way.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L, Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/products/asphalt-paves-the-way. Last Updated: December 22, 2025. Original Published Date: June 18, 2014.

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When Ralphie Parker and his 4th-grade classmates dejectedly handed over their Wax Fangs to Mrs. Shields in “A Christmas Story,” a generation might be reminded of what a penny used to buy at the local Woolworth’s store. But there is far more to these paraffin playthings than a penny’s worth of fun. 

It’s hard to recall a time when there were no Wax Lips, Wax Moustaches, or Wax Fangs for kids to smuggle into classrooms. Many grownups may remember the peculiar disintegrating flavor of Wax Lips from bygone Halloweens and birthday parties, but few know where these enduring icons of American culture started. The answer can be found by way of the oil patch.

“A Christmas Story” in 1983 featured Ralphie, his 4th-grade classmates, and a petroleum product. Photos courtesy MGM Home Entertainment.

Beginning with the August 1859 first commercial U.S. oil well, Pennsylvania oilfields quickly brought an important new source for refining kerosene. “This flood of American petroleum poured in upon us by millions of gallons, and giving light at a fifth of the cost of the cheapest candle,” wrote British chandler James Wilson in 1879.

As kerosene lamps replaced candles for illumination, the much-reduced candle business turned from tallow to versatile paraffin.

A byproduct of kerosene distillation, paraffin found its way from refinery to marketplace in candles, sealing waxes, and chewing gums. Ninety percent of all candles by 1900 used paraffin as the new century brought a host of novel uses. Thomas Edison’s popular new phonographs also needed paraffin for their wax cylinders.

Concord Confections, part of Tootsie Roll Industries, has produced Wax Lips and other paraffin candies for generations of schoolchildren.

Crayons were introduced by the Binney & Smith Company in 1903 and were instantly successful. Alice Binney came up with the name by combining the French word for chalk, craie, with an English adjective meaning oily, oleaginous: Crayola (see Carbon Black and Oilfield Crayons).

In New York City, after collecting unrefined waxy samples from Pennsylvania oil wells, Robert Chesebrough invented a method for turning paraffin into a balm he called “petroleum jelly,” later “Vaseline.” His product also led to a modern cosmetic giant (learn more in The Crude History of Mabel’s Eyelashes).

Paraffin Lips, Fangs, and Horses Teeth

An inspired Buffalo, New York, confectioner soon used fully refined, food-grade paraffin and a sense of humor to find a niche in America’s imagination. When John W. Glenn introduced children to paraffin “penny chewing gum novelties,” his business boomed. By 1923, his J.W. Glenn Company employed 100 people, including 18 traveling sales representatives.

Glenn Confections became the wax candy division of Franklin Gurley’s nearby W.&F. Manufacturing Company. There, the ancestors of Wax Lips chattered profitably down the production line. Among the most popular of these novelties at the time were Wax Horse Teeth (said to taste like wintergreen).

By 1939, Gurley was producing a popular series of holiday candles for the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company using paraffin from a nearby refinery at Olean, New York — once home to the world’s largest crude oil storage site. A field of metal tanks, some holding 20,000 gallons of paraffin, stood next to Gurley’s W.&F. Manufacturing Company in Buffalo.

Glenn Confections, a division of W. & F. Manufacturing Company, produced Fun Gum Sugar Lips, Wax Fangs, and Nik-L-Nips.

Decorative and scented paraffin candles soon became the company’s principal products, accounting for 98 percent of W.&F. Manufacturing sales. Gurley’s “Tavern Candle” Santas, reindeer, elves, and other colorful Christmas favorites today are prized by collectors on eBay, as are his elaborately molded Halloween candles.

Glenn Confections, the W.&F. wax candy division, has continued to manufacture the popular Fun Gum Sugar Lips and Wax Fangs, with small, wax bottles — Nik-L-Nips — available from the Old Time Candy Company.

In Emlenton, Pennsylvania, a few miles south of Oil City, the Emlenton Refining Company (and later the Quaker State Oil Refining Company) provided the fully refined, food-grade paraffin for the bizarre but beloved treats. Retired Quaker State employee Barney Lewis remembers selling Emlenton paraffin to W.&F. Manufacturing.

During a 2005 interview, Lewis noted, “It was always fun going to the plant…they were very secret about how they did stuff, but you always got a sample to bring home,” adding, “Wax Lips, Nik-L-Nips…the little Coke bottle-shaped wax, filled with colored syrup.”

Concord Confections, a small part of Tootsie-Roll Industries, continues to produce Wax Lips and other paraffin candies for new generations of schoolchildren. The modern petroleum industry produces an astonishing range of products for consumers. But among the many products that find their history in the oilfield, few are as unique and peculiar as Wax Lips.

In December 2007, “A Christmas Story” was ranked the number one Christmas film of all time by AOL. Set in 1940, the movie has been shown in an annual marathon since 1997. Among the waxy petroleum products featured in the movie is the father’s “major award” — a plastic leg-lamp with black polymer nylon stocking.

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Recommended Reading: Sweet!: The Delicious Story of Candy (2009); How Sweet It Is (and Was): The History of Candy (2003). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Oleaginous History of Wax Lips.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/products/an-oleaginous-history-of-wax-lips. Last Updated: December 17, 2025. Original Published Date: December 1, 2006.

The post Oleaginous History of Wax Lips appeared first on American Oil & Gas Historical Society.

Designed for different fuels, 19th-century lamps burned many fuels, including rapeseed oil, lard, whale oil, and camphene — the distilled spirits of turpentine. Another dangerous but widely used fuel was “burning fluid,” a volatile combination of distilled spirits of turpentine and alcohol with camphor oil added for aroma.

The first commercial U.S. oil well was completed in 1859 to produce oil for making a better lamp fuel. But until replaced by kerosene, risky, two-wicked burning-fluid lamps provided light for much of America.

The burning fluid mixture required a double burner but no chimney, according to Ron Miller, a self-taught tinsmith and “hands-on historian.” He became fascinated by the designs of these early illuminating lamps.

Jim Miller’s 19th-century lamp tin recreations, left to right: a whale oil burner; an 1842 patented lard oil burner; a “Betty Lamp” fueled by fat; and a typical burning fluid two-spout lamp.

“This adventure has deepened my appreciation for past craftsmanship and the intelligence of commonplace things in early America,” explained Miller in his 2012 For the Love of History blog. “Besides, now I have all this cool stuff to play (teach) with.”

The key to learning about early-to-mid-19th-century oil lamps was to study their burners, Miller noted, adding, “Each type of fuel needed a specific style of burner to give the best light.”

Although most of the fuels have become obsolete, Miller “wanted to faithfully replicate the burners in order to understand how they evolved,” he said, adding, “For the time being, substitute fuels would have to do.”

Miller fashioned tin into period lamp designs, including one fueled by fat — a “Betty Lamp” that “has an ancestry extending clear back to the Romans but had been improved on over time.”

The modern-day tinsmith recreated a whale oil lamp, circa 1850, and a patented lard oil burner of 1842 (the lard needed to be warmed to improve its fluidity).

Miller recreated a lard oil lamp using an 1842 patent drawing. By faithfully replicating lamps, he seeks to “understand how they evolved.”

“These tubes never extend down past the mounting plate and never have slots for wick adjustment. Apparently, any heat added to the fuel caused an accumulation of gases,” he noted.

Most surviving original burning-fuel lamps have small covers to snuff out the flame and keep the fuel from evaporating. Newspapers also reported the danger of flash fires during refueling (see Camphene to Kerosene Lamps).

“The style of lamp I chose to replicate is sometimes called a petticoat lamp by collectors for the flared shape of the base. Such lamps are often mislabeled as whale oil lamps but the difference is obvious once you know your burners,” Miller concluded about his replica.

“In case you wondered, my lamp burns modern lamp oil, as I don’t need to kill myself in the pursuit of history,” the tinsmith added.

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Recommended Reading:  Oil Lamps The Kerosene Era In North America (1978). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Making a Two-Wick Lamp.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/products/two-wick-camphene-lamp. Last Updated: December 1, 2025. Original Published Date: March 11, 2018.

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