Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico are
major players in the American oil industry, with huge reserves and plenty of
oil rigs. You might logically assume, then, that the first commercial oil well
in the United States was drilled somewhere in the Lone Star State, the Sooner
State, or the Land of Enchantment.
It wasn’t.
The first commercial oil well was drilled in 1859 by Edwin Drake near
Titusville, Pennsylvania. Known as Drake’s Well, it helped launch the American
petroleum industry.
So, this story is about Drake.
It’s not.
It’s about Gus.
Robert Augustus “Gus” Chesebrough was
a Brooklyn-born chemist. While visiting the Pennsylvania oil fields, he became
interested in a strange bi-product turning up around the new drilling
operations.
It was a gooey substance the
oil workers called rod wax. The roughnecks were using it on cuts, burns, and
irritated skin.
Gus saw possibilities.
He brought some of the stuff back to
Brooklyn, where he began experimenting with it. Eventually, he figured out how
to purify and refine it into something he called petroleum jelly.
Then he gave it a name that would
become considerably more famous:
Vaseline.
But Gus had a problem.
People weren't exactly lining up to
smear petroleum byproduct on themselves.
So Chesebrough took his product on the
road.
He would set up public demonstrations
and sometimes deliberately burn himself with acid or an open flame. Then he
would apply Vaseline to the injury.
It was a rather dramatic way of
saying:
“See? This stuff works.”
Apparently, it worked as advertising,
too.
Word spread, and Vaseline became
increasingly popular.
End of story.
Not yet.
Wait…
Remember Mary Poppins?
In the 1964 Disney film, Julie Andrews
sings the famous song:
“A spoonful of sugar makes the
medicine go down.”
Well, Gus had his own version of the
medicine routine.
He was such a believer in Vaseline
that he claimed to eat a spoonful of it every day. He credited the habit with
helping him live a long life.
Gus retired in 1909.
He died in 1933 at 96.
Whether petroleum jelly had anything to do with that is another question
entirely.
Meanwhile, Vaseline was still going strong—and eventually became part of
a $3.1 billion acquisition.
PBJ anyone?
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