VaselineIn 1878, the name Vaseline was registered as a trademark for the petroleum jelly developed by an English-born chemist Robert Augustus Chesebrough. He began, in 1859, with an interest in the petroleum oil boom, and travelled to Titusville, Pa., where oil strikes began, to enter that business. Once there, his chemist's curiosity was caught by a pasty residue that stuck to driller's rods and clogged their pumps. Workers had found it was practical to use on burns and cuts to promote healing. Cheseborough returned to Brooklyn and spent years experimenting to extract and purify the useful ingredient he called "petroleum jelly." Manufacturing from 1870, he received a patent on the product on 4 Jun 1872 (No. 127,568). |