Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Shop Talk Petroliana Forums General Petroliana Discussion Ethyl name origin

I'm at work talking about gas pumps and a coworker asked me if I knew where the term Ethyl originiated. I thought it was a pretty good question. Does anyone have any history?

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Chuck

Signs Wanted: Sunset, Clipper, Habor, Indian, Powerlube, Beacon, Sinclar Aircraft

Tetra-ethyl lead is the full name.
Liquid lead.
Developed by GM, in the early 20's
POISON !!!!!!!
Don't know how they came up with the name.
Try Latin

ETHYL

The 1920s
Environmental Conflict
Over Leaded Gasoline
and Alternative Fuels

Paper to the
American Society for Environmental History

Annual Conference March 26-30, 2003
Providence, R.I.


By William Kovarik, Ph.D.
wkovarik@radford.edu


Ethyl alcohol was blended at 10-20% with gasoline to boost "octane" in European motor fuels during the 1920s and 30s. The Discol blend featured in this advertisement was a typical alternative to Ethyl brand leaded gasoline.


"In from 10 to 20 years this country will be dependent entirely upon outside sources for a supply of liquid fuels... paying out vast sums yearly in order to obtain supplies of crude oil from Mexico, Russia and Persia." – Harold Hibbert, 1921, Dept. of Chemistry, Yale University

"They say we have foreign oil. Well, how are we going to get it in case of war? It is in Venezuela, it is out in the east, in Persia, and it is in Russia. Do you think that is much defense for your children?" – Francis Garvan, Chemical Foundation president, Second Dearborn Conference on Farm Chemurgy, 1936


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Contents


Abstract
Outline of the Ethyl Conflict
Ethyl alcohol for spirit lamps
Ethyl alcohol in the early 20th century
Ethyl alcohol fuel fesearch around World War I
Scientific conclusions about ethyl alcohol
Discovery of Ethyl leaded gasoline
Kettering proposes high and low percentage solutions to the fuel problem
Ethyl alcohol from cellulose as the fuel of the futur


TEL and ethyl alcohol at GM 1921-22
The Bayway and Deepwater refinery disasters
GM Contradicts Its Own Research at Public Health Service Hearing
Public Health Service appoints expert committee
Other sources of competition with TEL
U.S. ethyl alcohol fuels 1920s and 30s
Ethyl alcohol versus Ethyl leaded gasoline: anti-trust issues in the 1930s
Ethyl alcohol in Europe in the 1930s
Conclusion
Footnotes
Bibliography


Abstract

The late 20th century environmental controversy over the phase-out of leaded gasoline is well documented and familiar to most people, since the transition to unleaded fuel occurred less than 20 years ago. However, this recent controversy took place in a vacuum of history, in effect, repeating it.

The early 20th century controversy over the introduction of Ethyl brand leaded gasoline was not well known. Historians have seen it as an example of partisan science (Pleeth, 1949); an example of the heroic nature of invention (Boyd, 1957; Young, 1960; Hughes, 1979; Robert, 1983; Allen, 1996); as the "Three Mile Island" of the 1920s (Pratt, 1980); an example of the contingent nature of technological choices (Bernton, 1981); as a way for GM to compete with Ford (Loeb, 1995); and a case of industry hegemony over science (Rosner & Markowitz, 1989). In recent years, the release of some previously private files has led to re-evaluation of the discovery of leaded gasoline in light of alternatives. (Kovarik, 1993, Kitman, 2000).

This paper summarizes some of the re-examination of Ethyl leaded gasoline in the context of the technological roads not taken, particularly ethyl alcohol and the close competition between the two Ethyls as anti-knock fuels in the 1920s and 1930s.

This paper concludes that Ethyl alcohol fuel and Ethyl leaded gasoline are not simply "substitutes" for each other. In the 1919-1923 period, researchers believed that ethyl alcohol would be the fuel of the future when oil ran out. Their original secret motive for creating leaded gasoline was to standardize a high compression gasoline engine that would more efficiently use ethyl alcohol in an oil-short future. Even so, when the environmental crisis came to a head in 1925, GM researchers claimed in government hearings that there were no alternatives to leaded gasoline.

A longstanding policy question of great importance has been whether technology is best shaped by private or by public interests. We are inundated with reasons to deregulate technology today, but the Ethyl conflict provides a cautionary tale about what happens when there is a vacuum of regulation.

The 21st century historical controversy involves interesting problems of interpretation and documentation as well. The Kovarik and Kitman re-evaluations of the Ethyl conflict have been seen as a " distorted interpretation of known historic events and documents that have long been in the public record" by industries that developed leaded gasoline. Yet nearly all original primary documents concerning TEL have long been kept out of the public record, with the exception of the small amount of Midgley material released in 1991. Last year, when tens of thousands of primary documents were provided under legal discovery procedures for a product liability lawsuit (Smith v. Lead Industries), they were sealed at the industry's request.


Outline of the Ethyl Conflict

The Ethyl conflict involves several stages of historical competition between two "Ethyls":

1) Ethyl alcohol, (ethanol) made from farm crops or cellulose, which can be blended with gasoline to boost octane (anti-knock) ratings; and

2) "Ethyl" brand leaded gasoline, a higher octane gasoline sold between 1923 and 1986, now banned in most nations for public health reasons.

Considering engine performance only, there is little difference between the two additives. Three grams of TEL has about the same effect on anti-knock as adding a pint and a half of ethanol to a gallon of gasoline (15-20%), all other things being equal. (Gray/USDA, 1933; Thomas, 2001).

Ethyl alcohol is best known as a beverage, of course, but it has also been used as a fuel from the dawn of time. In a blend with turpentine known as "camphene" it was a popular lamp fuel in the first half of the 19th century. It was the fuel used in early automotive experiments by Samuel Morey, Nicholas Otto, Henry Ford and others. Ford championed the view that ethanol was the fuel of the future that would ease the farm crisis by creating new markets for farm products. Ethyl alcohol was blended with various fuels, including gasoline, to boost fuel anti-knock (later known as octane) well before tetra-ethyl lead was introduced. Because it has a naturally high anti-knock rating and can be used in blends or alone as a fuel in standard internal combustion engines, it was considered in the 1920s by many experts – Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, and Charles Kettering among them – to be the fuel of the future.

In recent years ethyl alcohol blends in gasoline have been called "gasohol" or "ethanol enhanced" gasoline. Most recently, ethanol has replaced MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl alcohol) as an octane booster, especially in areas like California where MTBE is blamed for contaminating water supplies.

Ethyl leaded gasoline is the confusing brand name choice for tetra ethyl lead (TEL), which was an anti-knock (octane boosting) gasoline additive discovered by General Motors researchers on Dec. 9, 1921 and introduced commercially in Ohio on Feb. 2,1923. Ethyl is also the corporate name of the joint GM-Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon) venture established in 1924 to market the additive. Since GM was 38 percent owned by the E. I. Du Pont de Nemours at the time, there were initially three partners.

The general public first learned of TEL in late October,1924 when half a dozen workers went violently insane and then died, apparently from a mysterious poison they were making at a Standard oil refinery in New Jersey. When it became clear that this poison was being put into gasoline, and that other workers had died in similar refineries, a vehement public health controversy broke out. GM and Standard insisted that TEL was only dangerous in concentrated form at the refinery, not when diluted in gasoline. But public health scientists, especially Drs. Alice Hamilton of Harvard and Yandell Henderson of Yale, said it was an important public health question and insisted that safer alternatives should be used (as we will see below).

The PHS appointed an expert committee to investigate health impacts of leaded gasoline, but they did not investigate alternatives despite reports of their widespread use. Health investigations did find what were probably high blood levels of lead, such as blood cell stippling, among garage mechanics and gasoline station attendants. However, the symptoms were not advanced, and government at the time was not strong enough, to ban leaded gasoline. In January 1926, the expert committee issued a report stating that there was “no good grounds for prohibiting the use of Ethyl gasoline," provided that its own investigation was not allowed to lapse. In fact, no independent investigations were continued, although Ethyl financed decades of research through the University of Cincinnati.

In 1962, GM arranged a leveraged buyout of Ethyl by a Virginia paper company so that the company was independent and no longer a partnership with Standard Oil of N.J. (Exxon). In 1965 and 1966, scholarship and Congressional testimony, especially from Clair Patterson, a California Institute of Technology geochemist., showed that Ethyl's Cincinnati research was based on questionable and probably fabricated data. (Patterson, 1965, Rosner & Markowitz,1989)

In 1970, GM announced its intention to build cars that would use unleaded gasoline. In 1972 that the Environmental Protection Agency began a regulatory process that phased out leaded gasoline. The decision was primarily based on the need for catalytic converters to reduce other pollutants such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides. Leaded gasoline had to be phased out since catalytic converters are contaminated by lead. Yet public health concerns were also seriously considered. Many studies, especially early studies by Herbert Needleman and associates, found children highly affected by leaded gasoline.

The phase out process took until 1986 in the US, another 15 years in Europe and is still underway in most developing nations. Indonesia, one of the last, won't phase out leaded gasoline until 2005.

Today, over 50 to 70 percent of children living in the inner cities like New Orleans and Philadelphia have blood lead levels above the current guideline of 10 micrograms per deciliter. The toxic effects of lead include damage to the nervous system, learning impairments and behavioral problems. High lead levels in many urban areas are from leaded gasoline more than lead paint. (Mielke, 1999).

Concerns about damage from widespread lead poisoning turned out to have been justified, as Henderson, Hamilton and others foresaw in 1925. The story of their public health advocacy, especially with its emphasis on alternative technologies, deserves to be remembered.

Ethyl alcohol for spirit lamps

Use of ethyl alcohol as a fuel is ancient, but its widespread use for indoor lighting began in the early 19th century with spirit lamps that were improvements to candles and lanterns.

It is a myth has it that kerosene arrived just in time to replace dwindling supplies of whale oil. In fact, 19th century illuminants included a wide variety of fuels: vegetable oils (castor, rapeseed, peanut); animal oils (especially whale oil and tallow from beef or pork,); refined turpentine from pine trees; and alcohols, especially wood alcohol (methanol or methyl alcohol) and grain alcohol (ethanol or ethyl alcohol). By far the most popular fuel in the U.S. before petroleum was a blend of alcohol and turpentine called "camphene" or simply "burning fluid." Around1860, thousands of distilleries churned out at least 90 million gallons of alcohol per year for lighting. Camphene (at $.50 per gallon) was cheaper than whale oil ($1.30 to $2.50 per gallon) and lard oil (90 cents per gallon). It was about the same price as coal oil, which was the product first marketed as "kerosene" (literally "sun fuel").

Kerosene from petroleum was a useful fuel when it arrived in the 1860s: it was usually not too volatile, it burned brightly and it was fairly cheap. A gradual shift from camphene to kerosene might have occurred. Instead, a $2.08 per gallon tax on alcohol was imposed in stages between 1862 and 1864 as part of the Internal Revenue Act to pay for the Civil War. The tax was meant to apply to beverage alcohol, but without any specific exemption, it was also applied to fuel and industrial uses for alcohol. "The imposition of the internal-revenue tax on distilled spirits ... increased the cost of this 'burning fluid' beyond the possibility of using it in competition with kerosene..," said Rufus F. Herrick, an engineer with the Edison Electric Testing Laboratory who wrote one of the first books on the use of alcohol fuel in 1907.

While a gradual shift from burning fluid (or spirit lamps) to kerosine did occur in Europe during the last half of the 19th century, the American alcohol tax meant that kerosene became the primary fuel virtually overnight, and the distilleries making lamp fuel lost their markets. The tax "had the effect of upsetting [the distilleries] and in some cases destroying them," said IRS commissioner David A. Wells in 1872.1

By 1906, a movement to repeal the tax on non-beverage industrial uses was hailed as a new market for American farmers. Earlier popular attempts to repeal the tax had failed on technicalities, but the farm lobby found an ally in President Theodore Roosevelt, a bitter foe of the oil industry. Roosevelt said an industrial alcohol industry provided a possible check to the depredations of the oil trust. In April, 1906, a bill to repeal the alcohol sales tax sailed through the House on a 224 to 7 vote with widespread support from farm-belt representatives. Additional support came from the Temperance Party, which saw in alcohol fuel a beneficial use for a pernicious commodity. The president of the Automobile Club of America also supported the bill, saying: "Gasoline is growing scarcer, and therefore dearer, all the time... Automobiles cannot use gasoline for all time, of that I am sure, and alcohol seems to be the best substitute that has yet appeared." (US House and Senate hearings on the "Free Alcohol" bill, 1906).

Ethyl alcohol in the early 20th century

The idea of replacing the external combustion steam engine with an internal combustion liquid fuel engine seized the world's imagination in the late 19th century, but the origins of internal combustion engines can be traced back two centuries beforehand. Historian Lyle Cummins has noted that at least a dozen inventors tried to develop some form of internal combustion engine by the early 19th century. The first authentic internal combustion engine in America was developed by Samuel Morey at the surprisingly early date of 1826. It ran on ethyl alcohol and turpentine (camphene) and powered an experimental wagon and a small boat at eight miles per hour up the Connecticut river. . (Cummins, 1989).

Nicholas Otto's early prototype of the internal combustion engine used ethyl alcohol as a fuel because it was widely used for spirit lamps throughout Europe. He devised a carburetor which, like Morey's, heated the alcohol to help it vaporize as the engine was being started. It is interesting to note that Otto's initial financing came from Eugen Langen, who owned a a sugar refining company that probably had links to the alcohol markets of Europe. Of course, the Otto & Langen company went on to success in the 1870s by producing stationary gas engines (usually powered by coal gas) and the later "Otto-cycle" engine was fueled primarily with gasoline but was still adaptable to alcohol or benzene from coal. Numerous other engine prototypes were developed using alcohol or turpentine, including the 1870s external combustion engine developed by US inventor George Brayton. However, at the dawn of the automotive age, kerosene was widely available and gasoline, although volatile and dangerous for lamps, was cheap and very much in surplus as a byproduct of kerosene refining.

During the 1890 - 1914 time period, German, French and British scientists and government officials were worried about the longevity of oil reserves and the unpredictable nature of oil supplies from Russia and America. "The oil trust battles between Rockefeller, the Rothschilds, the Nobels and Marcus Samuel's Shell kept prices in a state of flux, and engines often had to be adaptable to the fuel that was available," said Cummins. Manufacturing companies in Germany, England and France sold engines equipped to handle a variety of fuels. In tropical nations where oil supplies were quite irregular, and in closed environments such as mines and factories, alcohol engines were often preferred.

With few domestic oil reserves, France and Germany especially were eager to encourage widespread development of a fuel that could be readily distilled from domestic farm products. Research at the Experimental Mechanical Laboratory of Paris and at the Deutsche Landwirtschaftliche Gesellschaft in Berlin in the 1890s helped pave the way for expanded use of alcohol fuel. (Brachvogel, 1907). The question of whether gasoline or alcohol was the better fuel often provoked spirited debate, and numerous races between cars with different fuels were held in Europe.

Scientific journals contain hundreds of references to alcohol fuel at the dawn of the automotive era.2 Research during the earliest decades tended to focus on pure alcohol as a replacement for petroleum. The focus shifted to the anti-knock ("octane" boosting) properties of alcohol blends in gasoline during the 1915 to 1936 period because of an increasing need for anti-knock gasoline and because of improvements in alcohol production techniques.

Studies of alcohol as an internal combustion engine fuel began in the U.S. with the Edison Electric Testing Laboratory and Columbia University in 1906. Elihu Thomson reported that despite a smaller heat or B.T.U. value, "a gallon of alcohol will develop substantially the same power in an internal combustion engine as a gallon of gasoline. This is owing to the superior efficiency of operation..." (New York Times Aug. 5, 1906) Other researchers confirmed the same phenomena around the same time.

USDA tests in 1906 also demonstrated the efficiency of alcohol in engines and described how gasoline engines could be modified for higher power with pure alcohol fuel or for equivalent fuel consumption, depending on the need. The U.S. Geological Service and the U.S. Navy performed 2000 tests on alcohol and gasoline engines in 1907 and 1908 in Norfolk, Va. and St. Louis, Mo. They found that much higher engine compression ratios could be achieved with alcohol than with gasoline. When the compression ratios were adjusted for each fuel, fuel economy was virtually equal despite the greater B.T.U. value of gasoline. "In regard to general cleanliness, such as absence of smoke and disagreeable odors, alcohol has many advantages over gasoline or kerosene as a fuel," the report said. "The exhaust from an alcohol engine is never clouded with a black or grayish smoke." USGS continued the comparative tests and later noted that alcohol was "a more ideal fuel than gasoline" with better efficiency despite the high cost.

Ethyl Alcohol Fuel Research around World War I

The French War Office tested gasoline, benzene and an alcohol-benzene blend in road tests in 1909, and the results showed that benzene gave higher mileage than gasoline or the alcohol blend in existing French trucks. The British Fuel Research Board also tested alcohol and benzene mixtures around the turn of the century and just before World War I, finding that alcohol blends had better thermal efficiency than gasoline but that engines developed less brake horsepower at low rpm. On the other hand, a British researcher named Watson found that thermal efficiencies for alcohol, benzene and gasoline were very nearly equal. (Monier-Williams, 1922).

During and after the war, the British Fuel Research Board actively researched military and civilian fuels and in1918 said that alcohol and coal based fuels could replace oil in the post-war period. Especially notable was the work of Eugene Ormandy and H.R. Ricardo. Ormandy noted the absence of technical problems with alcohol blends, but concluded that "alcohol cannot compete with gasoline at present prices." Harold B. Dixon, working for the board and other governmental departments, reported in 1920 that higher possible engine compression compensated for alcohol's low caloric value. A mixture of alcohol with 20 percent benzene or gasoline "runs very smoothly, and without knocking." Also, B.R. Tunnison reported in 1920 the anti-knock effects of alcohol blends in gasoline and said mileage was improved. Ormandy also noted that only five percent of the American grain crop would meet requirements for a blended fuel. The board's committee on "power alcohol" (Ormandy, 1919).

Another significant set of British experiments was performed by the London General Omnibus Co. in 1919 comparing gasoline with blends of ethyl alcohol and benzene. Mileage was about the same, with gasoline slightly ahead. "In all other respects the [alcohol] fuel compared favorably with petrol [gasoline], and exhibited the characteristics of other alcohol mixtures in respect of flexibility, absence of knocking and cleanliness." The bus experiment also showed that a large scale switch from petroleum was technically feasible. "We are fast squandering the oil that has been stored in the fuel beds, and it seems so far as our present knowledge takes us that it is to the fuels experimented with that we must turn for our salvation," said the omnibus company engineer in the SAE Journal. (Shave,1920) |

H.R. Ricardo's work focused in part on testing fuels at various compression ratios up to the point where they would begin knocking, or what he termed the "highest useful compression ratio." Ethyl alcohol had a 7.5 value, with commercial gasolines then available at 4.5 to 6. Ricardo also developed the Toluene Index, which like Thomas Midgley's "iso-octane" measured anti-knock with a reference fuel. Ricardo concluded that the low burning rate of alcohol lessened the tendency to knock, and that, using toluene as the reference point at 100 anti-knock, alcohol had a 130 rating. (Ricardo, 1921). According to historian Stuart Leslie, Ricardo found that “ethyl alcohol never knocked, it could be produced by distilling waste vegetable material, and it was almost pollution-free. Ricardo compared alcohol fuel to living within a man’s means, implying that fossil fuels were a foolish squandering of capital.” [i]

Several difficulties with alcohol fuels were known: cold starting, was one, and E.C. Freeland noted that blends of small amounts of ether in alcohol could solve the problem.(Friedland, 1925) Another problem was "phase separation," noted above. But the tendency of alcohol and gasoline to separate at lower temperatures in the presence of water could be easily overcome with "binders," and was noted by Thomas Midgley, among others. These were small amounts of additives such as higher-carbon alcohols (such as propyl or butyl alcohol), ethers and / or benzene. Operating practice was also important tin dealing with alcohol fuels. Fuel distributors were cautioned to use anhydrous (low water content) alcohol and avoided storing alcohol-gasoline blends in tanks with water "bottoms." Swedish researcher E. Hubendick said that the danger of separation "can be ignored in my estimation" because even if it did occur, it would never stop the motor in the way that a small amount of water in the gas tank would. (Hixon, 1933).

Scientific Conclusions About Ethyl Alcohol

These experiments and ideas are representative of a great deal of work underway before and after World War I. The scientific conclusions were so definitive that even a 1915 boys' book entitled Modern Inventions had a chapter entitled "Alcohol Motors and the Fuel of the Future" sandwiched amid the zeppelins and submarines. (Johnson, 1915). Higher compression was listed as among ethyl alcohol's advantages.

Scientific American summed up the research in many articles during this period. Several representative articles are cited here:

• … the fuel problem is rapidly getting more serious. Alcohol has often been suggested, but it is not altogether satisfactory, and the supply is not great enough to allow it to take the place of gasoline… It has been found that a mixture of 25 percent each of gasoline and benzole with 50 percent of alcohol works very satisfactorily in our present motors, and as these proportions correspond fairly well with the output of various ingredients that may be anticipated, this may prove to be the solution of the fuel problem.." (April 13, 1918, p. 339).

"It is now definitely established that alcohol can be blended with gasoline to produce a suitable motor fuel that will avoid the difficulties of starting a cold motor on alcohol alone and without any change in the carburetor or the compression of the engine… The production of industrial alcohol on a large scale would accordingly help materially to increase the supply of fuel … Distilleries and breweries whose business is being curtailed by passage of 'dry' laws in different states … should welcome an opportunity to continue operation." (July 6, 1918).

"Increasing prices of the liquid fuels required by the motor industry led the author to examine the patent specifications bearing on this subject from 1913 onward … The specifications bear evidence of the universal assumption that [ethyl] alcohol in some form will be a constituent of the motor fuel of the future… Every chemist knows [alcohol and gasoline] will mix, and every engineer knows [they] will drive an internal combustion engine." (Dec. 11, p.593)
In short, technical research into ethyl alcohol as a fuel tended to be extremely positive, with few if any negative findings. By 1925, an American researcher speaking at the New York Chemists Club said:

"Composite fuels made simply by blending anhydrous alcohol with gasoline have been given most comprehensive service tests extending over a period of eight years. Hundreds of thousands of miles have been covered in standard motor car, tractor, motor boat and aeroplane engines with highly satisfactory results... Alcohol blends easily excel gasoline on every point important to the motorist. The superiority of alcohol gasoline fuels is now safely established by actual experience... [Thus] the future of alcohol motor fuels is largely an economic problem. (Whitaker, 1925)
Discovery of Ethyl Leaded Gasoline

The discovery of tetraethyl lead as an antiknock additive has long been seen as a fine example of scientifically driven research. Thomas Hughes saw the discovery as "a beautiful [piece] of pure, or at least deliberately planned, research" and a systematic approach to the "reverse salient," -- a key problem in the broad front of technological progress. Engine knock was a key problem because it occurred at the upper limit of efficiency , power and cylinder compression in the internal combustion engines of the early 1920s. General Motors (G.M.) researchers Charles Kettering and Thomas A. Midgley "tried out all elements possible in a so-called Edisonian style," Hughes said. By overcoming knock, they opened the door to engines with almost twice the power and fuel efficiency. Hughes saw the discovery of Ethyl as closer to the heart of generic questions about invention than most other stories about other discoveries, that have often been "simplistic and adulatory."(Hughes, 1979).

Historians Joseph C. Robert, Stuart Leslie, Joseph Pratt and David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, along with biographers T.A. Boyd, Rosamond Young and Owen Allen, tended to focus on leaded gasoline as the final successful step in a progression of discovery. They focused on Ethyl brand leaded gasoline as a "success story" and paid little or no attention to the alternative possibilities in their historical context. Most, aside from Pratt and Rosner & Markowitz, minimized the controversy surrounding leaded gasoline.

In recent years, the need for a revised interpretation of the discovery has become evident. In the first place, tetra-ethyl lead was not a "success," and the seeds of its failure are perfectly evident in the controversy surrounding its birth, as we will see. In the second place, the abundance of literature concerning the anti-knock properties of ethyl alcohol would argue for at least an broader view of GM research. Kettering and Midgley did not "try out all possible elements" to find the single solution. In fact , they stumbled on quite a few solutions before they found one that could be profitably marketed.

Context of the Discovery

The discovery of tetra-ethyl lead (TEL) as an anti-knock additive took place in the context of post World War industrial expansion and new consumer expectations. The auto and oil industries were at an important crossroads. Experts all believed that oil was running out. Fuel quality was declining and engine knock was an increasingly important problem. Detroit had to chart a long-term development plan with some contingency for oil shortfalls.

From its early years, the American automobile manufacturing industry has worried about the possibility that oil would run out. As early as 1906, for example, representatives from the Detroit Board of Commerce told a U.S. Senate hearing that auto manufacturers worried “not so much [about] cost as ... supply” of fuel. (US Senate, Free Alcohol Hearings,1906). Similar fears of oil shortages have occurred in other periods during the 20th century.

At the end of World War I, demand for fuel advanced quickly while the quality of fuel declined as lower quality reserves were brought into the market. Geologists estimated that only 20 or 30 years worth of oil were left in the U.S. and a “gasoline famine” was possible or even likely. (White, 1919; Smith, 1920). The USGS estimated US oil reserves at seven billion barrels while consumption was at 330 million barrels per year and rapidly increasing. (Scientific American Sept. 20 1919). Automotive engineers worried about “a calamity, seriously disorganizing an indispensable system of transportation.” (Scientific American March 8 1919). One solution was to import foreign oil. Some would even suggest fighting for it. (Denny, 1928).

Another solution was to search for an engine that was more tolerant of low-grade fuels. This would mean lower compression ratio engines that were less fuel efficient. According to a March 8, 1919 article in Scientific American,:

“The burden falls upon the engine, It must adapt itself to less volatile fuel, and it must be made to burn the fuel with less waste.... Automotive engineers must turn their thoughts away from questions of speed and weight... and comfort and endurance” and focus on averting the calamity.”


Kettering proposes high and low percentage solutions to the fuel problem

In 1919, General Motors decided to hire Charles F. Kettering, inventor of the electric starter motor for automobiles and then president of the Society of Automotive Engineers. Kettering would not only head GM’s research division, but Kettering’s entire organization, the Dayton Metal Products Co (DMPCO – formerly DELCO), would become the core of GM’s new research division. The entire research team, including fuel researchers Thomas Midgley and T.A. Boyd, came along with Kettering.

Kettering had already put Midgley and Boyd to work on the problem of anti-knock fuels in collaboration with the US Army and the US Bureau of Mines. (DMPCO, July 27, 1918, GMI Archive). Their report found that ethyl alcohol, benzene and a cyclohexane fuel they called “Hecter” could be used in high compression engines without knock. Details of the tests showed that ethyl alcohol had the best performance.

Kettering urged engineers to avoid compromising engine design by lowering compression ratios and adapting engines to less volatile fuels, as Scientific American suggested (above). In an undated (c. 1919-22) speech entitled “The Fuel Problem” Kettering said:

“Geologists tell us that at our present rate of consumption the domestic supply of crude oil will be exhausted in less than 15 years. If we could sufficiently raise the compression of our motors … we could double the mileage and thereby lengthen this period to 30 years.”

But where would automotive engineers find a fuel that would allow them to raise engine compression? With oil running out, the better quality crude oil stocks were being sold off, leaving lower grades of crude oil.3

Kettering had two approaches in mind: the “high percentage" and the “low percentage" additives to gasoline. Forty percent benzene was an example of a high percentage additive which “makes an engine operate entirely satisfactorily,” Kettering said. The low percentage solution was represented in 1919 by an accidental discovery that one percent iodine solution in gasoline could cut engine knock. It was too expensive and corrosive, Kettering said, but it pointed the way to a possible low percentage solution. (Scientific American, Oct. 11, 1919).

Iodine was impractical, but Midgley stumbled across aniline, which also had an anti-knock effect. In October, 1920, Midgley filed a patent application on an aniline injector for engines.4 Still, the pungent aroma of aniline exhaust clung to the air in the Dayton labs, magnifying the sense of failure. “I doubt if humanity, even to doubling of fuel economy, will put up with this smell,” Midgley wrote C.M. Stine of du Pont. Stine had been asked to develop plans for a full scale production effort for aniline. Kettering conceded that du Pont was “out of sympathy with our point of view,” and that they would have to do something “to stimulate interest in what is today the only known solution to the problem."

In the spring of 1921, Kettering chanced across a newspaper article on selenium, a potential “universal solvent.” Kettering laughed, remembering a joke about a farmer who asked a chemist what on earth would hold a "universal" solvent. He pocketed the news clip. When he returned to Dayton, out of the blue, Kettering gave it to Midgley and asked him to try selenium. On April 6, 1921, at the threshold of abandoning the project, Midgley discovered that selenium had an antiknock effect greater than aniline, although it smelled worse and was highly corrosive.

The research effort shifted into a somewhat more systematic and scientific approach. Guided by Robert Wilson of MIT, Midgley began focusing on groups of elements with potential antiknock effect. He pasted a chart of 20 elements in four groups onto a peg board and mapped the antiknock values of each element as it was tested. By August, 1921, preliminary tests pointed to lead as the best "low percentage" antiknock additive. By Dec. 9, 1921, a compound of lead suspended in alcohol had been found to be highly effective.

Historians would later see the peg board method as a turn from raw empiricism to a reasoned scientific method and as marking the broader industrial transition from the “heroic” style of invention in the mold of Edison to the more scientific, less personal corporate inventive approach.[ii] The unstated flip side of this analysis is difficult to ignore. How does a corporation arrive at a public health disaster while ignoring the existence of a perfectly useful alternative? Would a heroic style of invention have avoided the pitfalls that a corporate style could not? In any event, the individualistic nature of the GM research was not yet fully submerged. Midgley and Boyd continued working on ethyl alcohol and other "high percentage" solutions as well as TEL.

Experiments on alternatives continue at GM

If oil was running out, what was the point of creating anti-knock fuels? There were two motives -- one public and one private. The public was to increase engine compression and improve fuel efficiency. Early press releases about TEL indicate a possible doubling in fuel mileage.

But the private motive, and Kettering’s long term strategy, involved the high percentage solution and protection of General Motors over the long term. It is most clearly stated in the unpublished 1936 du Pont study, “The Origins and Early History of Tetra Ethyl Lead” by N. P. Wescott of du Pont's legal staff. According to the study:

" … An important special motive for this research was General Motors’ desire to fortify itself against the exhaustion or prohibitive cost of the gasoline supply, which was then believed to be impending in about twenty-five years; the thought being that the high compression motors which should be that time have been brought into general use if knocking could be overcome could more advantageously be switched to [ethyl] alcohol. "

The du Pont conclusion is supported by internal memos in the Midgley files and by public reports by researchers Midgley and Boyd. Alcohol was the “most direct route ... for converting energy from its source, the sun, into a material that is suitable for a fuel...” Midgley and Boyd said in one internal memo. Advantages included cleanliness and high antiknock rating, but disadvantages included supply problems. In 1921, about 100 million gallons of industrial alcohol supply was available. Overall, enough corn, sugar cane and other crops were available to produce almost twice the 1921 gasoline demand of 8.3 billion gallons per year. But the possibility of using such a large amount of food acreage for fuel “seems very unlikely,” (Boyd, 1921). In a speech about anti-knock fuels made around 1921, Kettering noted that “industrial alcohol can be obtained from vegetable products ... [but] the present total production of industrial alcohol amounts to less than four percent of the fuel demands, and were it to take the place of gasoline, over half of the total farm area of the United States would be needed to grow the vegetable matter from which to produce this alcohol.” (Kettering, GMI Archives, c.1921).

This skepticism about ethyl alcohol supply sources is anomalous. If the goal was to create antiknock additives at the "high percentage" level, why frame the question in terms of totally replacing gasoline? Anti knock blends of ethyl alcohol in gasoline would not strain farm resources nearly as much as a total replacement of gasoline. British researcher W.R. Ormandy estimated that five percent of the US grain crop would be sufficient (Ormandy, 1919). Using Boyd’s figure, a 20 percent blend of ethyl alcohol in gasoline would have involved about nine percent of existing grain and sugar crops. Yet it is interesting to note that grain was in surplus after World War I and many farmers would have welcomed new markets. Ethyl alcohol was also in surplus after the adoption of the 18th Amendment, which enforced Prohibition of alcohol beverages.5

Ethyl alcohol from cellulose as the fuel of the future
Around 1920, GM became interested in the conversion of cellulose to fermentable sugar being performed by Prof. Harold Hibbert at Yale University. Cellulose is a chain of glucose monomers that is the primary component of cotton, wood, straw, paper and many other natural fibers. The concept of breaking down the alpha linkages between the glucose molecules to produce food, fuels and chemicals was not novel in the 1920s.

Hibbert pointed out that the 1920 U.S.G.S. oil reserve report had serious implications for his work with cellulosic fuels. “Does the average citizen understand what this means?" he asked. "In from 10 to 20 years this country will be dependent entirely upon outside sources for a supply of liquid fuels... paying out vast sums yearly in order to obtain supplies of crude oil from Mexico, Russia and Persia.” Chemists might be able to solve the problem, Hibbert said, by making ethanol from abundant cellulose waste – materials such as seaweed, sawdust, corn stalks and wheat straw. (Hibbert, 1921).

In the summer of 1920, GM researcher T.A. Boyd and his family moved to New Haven so that he could study with Hibbert. Boyd found Hibbert impressive but the volume of scholarship concerning breakdown of cellulose linkages through hydrolysis was overwhelming. The problem was apparently more complex than Boyd and his boss Thomas A. Midgley realized. When Midgley came east in late July, he was more interested in meeting Standard Oil Co. officials than with Hibbert, and Boyd left without a clear sense of where the cellulose research could go. (Boyd to Midgley, July 8, 1920, GMI Archive; also Howard interview, 1960).

Boyd thought a source of alcohol “in addition to foodstuffs” must be found, and that the source would be cellulose: “It is readily available, it is easily produced and its supply is renewable.” The problem was that the process was expensive, he had learned in his stay with Hibbert. If a cheap process could be found, "the danger of a serious shortage of motor fuel would disappear,” Boyd said. “The great necessity for and the possibilities of such a process justify a large amount of further research.”

GM promotes alcohol fuel to SAE members
To promote the idea of alcohol blended fuels among automotive and chemical engineers, Midgley drove a high compression ratio car (7:1) from Dayton to an October 1921 Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) meeting in Indianapolis using a 30 percent alcohol blend in gasoline. “Alcohol has tremendous advantages and minor disadvantages,” Midgley told fellow SAE members in a discussion. Advantages included “clean burning and freedom from any carbon deposit... [and] tremendously high compression under which alcohol will operate without knocking... Because of the possible high compression, the available horsepower is much greater with alcohol than with gasoline...” Minor disadvantages included low volatility, difficulty starting, and difficulty in blending with gasoline “unless a binder is used.”6

Another engineer noted that a seven and a half percent increase in power was found with the alcohol-gasoline blend “...without producing any ‘pink’ [knock] in the engine. We have recommended the addition of 10 percent of benzol [benzene] to our customers who have export trade that uses this type of fuel to facilitate the mixing of the alcohol and gasoline.”[iii]

In a formal part of the presentation, Midgley mentioned the cellulose project. “From our cellulose waste products on the farm such as straw, corn-stalks, corn cobs and all similar sorts of material we throw away, we can get, by present known methods, enough alcohol to run our automotive equipment in the United States,” he said. The catch was that it would cost two dollars per gallon. However, other alternatives looked even more problematic -- oil shale wouldn't work, and benzene from coal would only bring in about 20 percent of the total fuel need. (Midgley, SAE, Oct. 1921, GMI Archives).

TEL and ethyl alcohol at GM 1921-22
Midgley and Kettering’s interest in ethyl alcohol fuel did not fade once tetraethyl lead anti-knock was discovered in December, 1921. In fact, not only was ethyl alcohol a source of continued interest as an antiknock agent, but it was still considered to be the fuel that would replace petroleum. In May of 1922, as work continued on developing TEL, Midgley wrote a memo to Kettering in response to an inquiry about a report on a Mexican ethyl alcohol fuel distillery. Midgley said: “Unquestionably alcohol is the fuel of the future and is playing its part in tropical countries… Alcohol can be produced in those countries for approximately 7 - 1/2 cents per gallon from many sources …” (Midgley to Kettering, May 23, 1922, GMI Archives).

While the potential for TEL was being considered within GM and DuPont, Midgley and Boyd also continued working on alcohol as the long term fuel of the future. In a June 1922 Society of Automotive Engineers paper, they said:

"That the addition of benzene and other aromatic hydrocarbons to paraffin base gasoline greatly reduces the tendency of these fuels to detonate [knock] ... has been known for some time. Also, it is well known that alcohol ... improves the combustion characteristics of the fuel ...The scarcity and high cost of gasoline in countries where sugar is produced and the abundance of raw materials for making alcohol there has resulted in a rather extensive use of alcohol for motor fuel. As the reserves of petroleum in this country become more and more depleted, the use of benzene and particularly of alcohol in commercial motor fuels will probably become greatly extended.” ( Note: bold section indicates a sentence used at the oral presentation at a June 1922 SAE meeting but not published in SAE Journal, June 1922, page 451; The oral presentation is from Midgley unprocessed files, GMI Archives).

In September, 1922, Midgley and Boyd wrote in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry that “vegetation offers a source of tremendous quantities of liquid fuel.” Cellulose from vegetation would be the primary resource because not enough agricultural grains and other foods were available for conversion into fuel. “Some means must be provided to bridge the threatened gap between petroleum and the commercial production of large quantities of liquid fuels from other sources. The best way to accomplish this is to increase the efficiency with which the energy of gasoline is used and thereby obtain more automotive miles per gallon of fuel.” (Midgley, Sept. 1922). At the time the paper was written, in late spring or early summer 1922, TEL was still a secret within the company, but it was announced that summer to fellow scientists. The reference to a means to "bridge the threatened gap" and increase in the efficiency of gasoline clearly implies the use of TEL or some other additive to pave the way to new fuel sources.

As interest in TEL in GM and duPont grew and ties to the oil industry increased, the original strategy of replacing dwindling petroleum with alcohol seems to have faded. Still, TEL was not ready and other anti-knock fuels certainly were available, as Kettering, Midgley and Boyd knew. In 1923, Midgley wrote to Navy Lt. B.G. Leighten warning him not to use TEL on a round-the-world flight but instead to use a blended fuel. TEL was giving spark plug and valve trouble, he said, and “the best possibilities are offered by a fuel consisting of a gasoline-benzol-alcohol blend. (Midgley, March16, 1923, GMI Archives).

The refinery disasters

The story of how GM's magic antiknock fluid killed 17 workers in the Standard Oil refinery at Bayway, N.J. and the du Pont refinery in Deepwater, N.J. has been recounted elsewhere (Rosner & Markowitz, 1989, Kovarik, 1993, 1994). Briefly, five Bayway workers went "violently insane" after working at the new TEL plant and died from severe lead poisoning. The media quickly learned about the mysterious poisonings and wrote articles which reflected concern but hardly seem hysterical, as claimed by Ethyl apologists.

The city of New York and several states banned leaded gasoline, and after a few weeks, the public outcry forced Ethyl to take leaded gasoline off the market. Public health scientists, especially Yandell Henderson of Yale spoke out against TEL.

“Breathing day by day of the fine dust from automobiles will produce chronic lead poisoning on a large scale...” The problem was “... the greatest single question in the field of public health which has ever faced the American public … Perhaps if leaded gasoline kills enough people soon enough to impress the public, we may get from Congress a much needed law and appropriation for control of harmful substances other than foods. But it seems more likely that the conditions will grow worse so gradually and the development of lead poisoning will come on so insidiously ... that leaded gasoline will be in nearly universal use and large numbers of cars will have been sold that can only run on that fuel before the public and the government awaken to the situation.” The question is whether “commercial interests are to be allowed to subordinate every other consideration to that of profit. It is not a matter of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars, but literally billions.” (NY Times April 22, 1925)

In response, Midgley said that Henderson was confusing pure TEL with diluted TEL, which had no immediately poisonous effect on people. Henderson was merely a disappointed consultant who didn't get an Ethyl contract. Henderson shot back that he had warned Midgley and GM years before that any investigation “would scarcely fail to show that the public use of leaded gasoline would involve an intolerable hazard to public health.” (NY Times, April 24, 1925)

Thus, claims (eg, Robert, 1983) that GM was not aware of the potential danger fail in the face of evidence of dire warnings from Henderson and from other scientists (Boyd, 1943), from the Public Health Service (Rosner & Markowitz, 1989) and from du Pont engineers (US v. E.I du Pont). One du Pont attorney, reflecting the bitterness of the internal Ethyl controversy, severely criticized the Standard Oil / General Motors design and operation of the Bayway plant.

"They put up a plant that lasted two months and killed five people and practically wiped out the rest of the plant. The disaster was so bad that the state of New Jersey entered the picture and issued an order that Standard could never go back into the manufacture of this material without the permission of the state of New Jersey…"

Even Midgley had lead poisoning from attempts to manufacture small batches of TEL in Dayton Ohio. By the spring of 1925, two refineries were half closed and the Ethyl issue had created chaos in GM, Standard and du Pont. Kettering, who had been in Europe, returned and started tests on an I.G. Farben additive called iron carbonyl and another GM fuel additive called "Synthol."

GM Contradicts Its Own Research

Despite the many examples of research pointed in the direction of the “fuel of the future,” GM researcher Thomas Midgley and his boss Charles Kettering categorically denied the existence of alternatives to TEL after the refinery disasters. The statements were not equivocal. No mention or admission of any alternative whatsoever is given, with the small exception of Kettering's PHS statement.

As noted above, in 1923, Midgley wrote in SEJ Journal: " It is well known that alcohol ... improves the combustion characteristics of the fuel," In 1925, he was a featured speaker at a meeting of the American Chemical Society. He said:

“So far as science knows at the present time, tetraethyl lead is the only material available which can bring about these [antiknock] results, which are of vital importance to the continued economic use by the general public of all automotive equipment, and unless a grave and inescapable hazard exists in the manufacture of tetraethyl lead, its abandonment cannot be justified.” (New York Times, April 7, 1925; also Midgley Aug. 1925).

At the Public Health Service conference on the dangers of leaded gasoline on May 20,1925, Kettering also denied that any viable alternatives to TEL existed:

"We could produce certain [antiknock] results and with the higher gravity gasolines, the aromatic series of compounds, alcohols, etc. [to] get the high compression without the knock, but in the great volume of fuel of the paraffin series [petroleum] we could not do that." (US PHS, 1925, p 6).

Dr. Robert Kehoe, medical consultant to Ethyl from the University of Cincinnatti also spoke at the PHS conference:

“…when a material is found to be of this importance for the conservation of fuel and for increasing the efficiency of the automobile, it is not a thing which may be thrown into the discard on the basis of opinion.” (US PHS, 1925, p 70).

Kehoe also said that there was no real difference of opinion at the conference between industry and public health because the fate of TEL was not in the hands of industries but rather “in the hands of medical men who have the public interest at heart” -- such as himself. And he promised that he and Ethyl would protect the public interest:

“If it can be shown … that an actual hazard exists in the handling of ethyl gasoline, that an actual hazard exists from exhaust gasses from motors, that an actual danger to the public is had as a result of the treatment of the gasoline with lead, the distribution of gasoline with lead in it will be discontinued from that moment. Of that there is no question.” (US PHS, 1925, p 70).

The testimony of Frank Howard of Standard Oil was most dramatic and emphatic about the need for TEL and the lack of alternatives:

“Our continued development of motor fuels is essential in our civilization... Now, after 10 years research ... we have this apparent gift of God which enables us to [conserve oil] ... We cannot justify ourselves in our consciences if we abandon the thing." (US PHS, 1925, p.105) 7

These claims drew strong rebuttals. Alice Hamilton of Harvard told the PHS conference: “I am utterly unwilling to believe that the only substance which can be used to take the knock out of a gasoline engine is TEL.” (US PHS, 1925, p 99) “Our best hope is that some non-poisonous substitute for TEL be found,” she said a month later (Hamilton, June 1925). Yandell Henderson also noted that “lead is not by any means the only substance which, on theoretical grounds , or even on the basis of experiments, can be used as an antiknock medium…[Researchers at Yale University] believe that there are other chemical and engineering possibilities.” (US PHS, 1925, p. 63).

Information about alternatives could have emerged with more force at this moment to contradict Midgley, Kettering, Howard and Kehoe. In the first place, news reports in advance of the PHS conference noted that it was to last several days in order to consider alternatives to TEL (Kovarik, 1993). This is partially corroborated by Surgeon General’s opening statement that the conference would last several days, even though the conference ended on the first day. In the second place, a report published but not released by the Dept. of Commerce only a few days before showed that alternative antiknock additives (mostly ethyl alcohol blends in gasoline) were being used routinely in two dozen other industrial nations. (Fox, 1925). And in any event, anyone familiar with Midgley and Boyd’s papers of 1921 and 1922 would see that they were flatly contradicting their own published research.

The New York World newspaper also said:
Original plans had called for presentation to the Public Health conference of claims of various persons that they have discovered dopes [additives] for fuels which are as efficient as lead but lack the danger. The conference decided at the last minute, however, that such things were not in its province, since it was called to consider only the danger of lead and not the lack of danger of any other chemical or mineral. For this reason, the conference adjourned after only a one day meeting, where it had been thought at first that four or five days might be taken. Many of the delegates to it held informal conferences today, however, at which fuel dopes were discussed. (NY World, May 22, 1925)

However, for reasons unknown, information about alternatives did not emerge except in a few statements by public health scientists and hints in the media. No record of any dissent exists, even though the industry flatly contradicted its own previous research.

Public Health Service Appoints Expert Committee

The result of the May 20, 1925 PHS conference was the appointment of a committee of experts to study the problem. The committee was composed of independent scientists from Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Yale, Vanderbilt and the Universities of Chicago and Minnesota.8 Hamilton and Henderson were not asked to join the committee, but senior colleagues at their institutions were. The Ethyl Corp. agreed to stop marketing Ethyl gasoline until their report had been completed.

The committee did not directly supervise the study and voiced some objections at the end of the course of the study which were never made public. The committee met June 14 and June 28 to consider the design of the study and corresponded with the P.H.S. on the plan of investigation during the summer. [iv]

The study began in October, 1925, conducted by J.P. Leake of the P.H.S. Hygiene Laboratory. The site of the study would be two garages in Dayton, Ohio -- one using leaded gasoline and one not using leaded gasoline -- were to be selected and the employees tested for blood stippling and fecal lead accumulation. Two more garages in Washington, D.C. were to have been added to the list "if time and personnel permit," according to the preliminary plan. It did not. Two groups of Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio workers (one of drivers and one of mechanics) who had been exposed to leaded gasoline were compared with two similar groups that had not been exposed. A control group of men working in lead industries was also examined.

Researchers found that drivers exposed to leaded gasoline showed somewhat higher "stippling" damage to red blood cells, while garage workers exposed to leaded gasoline showed much more damage to red blood cells, and one quarter of those exposed had over one milligram of lead in fecal samples. In comparison, over 80 percent of the industrial workers showed large amounts of lead in fecal samples. Although techniques for measuring lead levels were primitive in contrast with today’s standards, it is probable that workers with blood damage and high amounts of lead in fecal samples had absorbed amounts of lead that would today be considered dangerous, according to toxicologist and lead historian Jerome Niragu.9

TABLE I

SURGEON GENERAL'S COMMITTEE

ETHYL TEST RESULTS

Control Ethyl Control Ethyl Industrial

chauffeur chauffeur garage garage worker

worker worker (non-Ethyl exposure)

No.men 36 77 21 57 61

% showing

definite

stippling 12 12 24 46 93

% showing over

./3 mg. lead per

gram ash 6 2 6 14 81

Clinical

symptoms 0 0 0 0 23

Source: Anon, (probably J.P. Leake), Draft report to Committee on Tetra Ethyl Lead, December 22, 1925, C.E.A. Winslow papers, Box 101, Folder 1801, Yale University Library, New Haven, Ct.

The most important finding of the committee was that none of the garage workers and drivers had any of the outright symptoms of lead poisoning that killed 17 refinery workers and poisoned at least several hundred more between 1923 and 1925. As a result, the committee concluded that there were “no good grounds for prohibiting the use of Ethyl gasoline.” Not all the committee members agreed with that assessment. In a meeting on December 22, 1925, committee member David L. Edsall of Harvard objected that “we would be presenting a half-baked report” unless the committee studied “the effects this is going to have on others.” Reed Hunt of Harvard noted that the “big question” was whether the committee should absolutely prohibit tetraethyl lead or not. “If we say we shouldn’t absolutely prohibit it, then we should say that money should be appropriated to study any further hazard.” C.E.A. Winslow of Yale insisted on and got the following statement inserted into the report: “A more extensive study was not possible in view of the limited time allowed to the committee.”

In the end, the report warned that the uncertain danger and the incomplete data did not lead it to a definite conclusion:

Owing to the incompleteness of the data, it is not possible to say definitely whether exposure to lead dust increases in garages when tetraethyl lead is used. It is very desirable that these investigations be continued... It remains possible that if the use of leaded gasolines becomes widespread, conditions may arise very different from those studied by us which would render its use more of a hazard than would appear to be the case from this investigation. Longer exposure may show that even such slight storage of lead as was observed in these studies may lead eventually in susceptible individuals to recognizable lead poisoning or chronic degenerative disease of obvious character... The committee feels this investigation must not be allowed to lapse.

Winslow also recommended that the "search for and investigation of antiknock compounds be continued intensively with the object of securing effective agents containing less poisonous metals (such as iron, nickle, tin, etc.) or no metals at all." The recommendation was based on correspondence with Ford Motor Co. that Winslow forwarded to L.R. Thompson of the Public Health Service, asking that a file be established on alternatives. The letter to Winslow reads as follows:

August 15, 1925
ALCOHOL FOR MOTOR FUEL
Further to my letter of June 19th:
You may probably have observed the production of synthetic alcohol as brought out by the Badische Anilin and Soda Fabrik [BASF of I.G. Farben], now being produced in Germany at the rate of 60,000 gallons per month. Such alcohol is reported to be produced for between 10 cents and 20 cents per gallon and has much promise as a mixture with hydrocarbon fuels to eliminate knocking and carbonization.
(signed) Wm. H. Smith, Ford Motor Co.
The letter, clearly, is a fragment of more extensive correspondence that was not saved in the Public Health Service or Winslow files. Winslow's recommendation about continuing the search was not incorporated in the final committee report. Although disappointed in the report, Winslow wrote Henderson, who was in England in the winter of 1925, that he "did not see how things could have gone differently."

Meanwhile, Ethyl officials announced that they had been vindicated, and after agreeing to warning labels on leaded gasoline, began to market it again in the spring of 1926. These warning labels would become familiar to three generations of motorists and would appear in virtually every gasoline service station in America: “Contains lead (tetraethyl) and is to be used as a motor fuel only. Not for cleaning or any other use.”

Other sources of competition with TEL

Ethyl alcohol was not the only competitor for the anti-knock additive market. Public claims about a lack of alternatives notwithstanding, Frank Howard of Standard privately wrote Kettering of Ethyl / GM that “there are three major types of Ethyl Gasoline substitutes now on the market, as follows: 1. vapor phase cracked products 2. Benzol blends. 3. Gasoline from napthenic-base crudes.” The competition from benzene blends in gasoline was so strong in the Baltimore area, Howard said, that they “were not able to get out of the [benzene blended gasol

Sorry for the overkill...I meant to grab a couple of paragraphs, not the whole darn thing......

I think that about sums it up.. In a nut shell..

Jim

....yep......LOL !!!!!!

Thanks for the "ribbing", I deserved it. I was going to edit it,(I did edit the Bibliography) but decided to leave it as "we" somtimes get into discussions with lots of opinions and minimal facts...(LOL) Thought this might solve that. Read carefully, there will be a test on Tuesday and an extra credit question for what brand of gasoline is/was best and why.....(LOL)

And all this time I thought the ethyl additive was named after somebody's dog................

Richard

good one richard !!!!!!!.....

Thanks for the extensive thesis Alex. It was actually a good read!


------------------
Chuck

Signs Wanted: Sunset, Clipper, Habor, Indian, Powerlube, Beacon, Sinclar Aircraft