(The field of motor fuel has become so enormous that a spe...)
The field of motor fuel has become so enormous that a special treatise on this subject appeared to be warranted. The authors have endeavored to bring together in this volume such material as would constitute a substantially complete survey of this field. An endeavor of this description has not been without its labors and while shortcomings undoubtedly will be discovered in its pages it is believed the book will be found to afford a description of practically every process of making gasoline and of most other motor fuels of promise and prominence. Since motor fuels have secured so strong a foothold in the everyday affairs of mankind there has been the most remarkable activity among inventors and engineers to improve the methods of making gasoline and to utilize kerosene, benzol, alcohol and the like as well as to contrive the production of entirely new liquid fuels. As a result thousands of patents have issued. The authors survey of these patents has, it is hoped, been adequate to meet the requirements of the numerous investigators now concerned with the manifold phases of this field. It is the expectation of the authors that the volume will be found to contain very many suggestions to the practical operator for the improvement of plant methods. Effort has been made to strike a balance between the theoretical and the practical in the description of this industry. For the inventor and patent attorney the volume should be of considerable service; and the business man or banker who is interested in developing or promoting some one of the many methods advanced for the production of motor fuel, will find the book of easy reference owing to the complete index which is appended. The criticism may be advanced by some that the inclusion of so large a number of processes described only in the patent literature is undesirable as it tends to encumber the pages with what
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The Hydrogenation of Oils, Catalyzers Nad Catalysis and the Eneration of Hydrogen and Oxygen
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Carleton Ellis was an American inventor and a talent in the field of organic chemistry. Ellis was granted 753 United States patents, at the time of his death the third highest number granted to any individual.
Background
Carleton Ellis was born on September 20, 1876, in Keene, New Hampshire, to Marcus Ellis, a florist, and Catharine (Goodnow) Ellis.
His paternal ancestor, Richard Ellis, had left England in 1632 and was one of the original settlers of Dedham, Massachusetts.
A camera which Carleton's father gave him on his eleventh birthday aroused the boy's interest in the chemical reactions involved in photography.
Education
After graduating from the Keene high school, Ellis entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, planning to become a research chemist; he received the B. S. degree in 1900 and stayed on for two more years as an instructor.
During his senior year at M. I. T. , Ellis had conceived his first invention, a compound for removing paint and varnish. Lacking money to hire legal assistance, he studied patent law, prepared his own application, and was granted the patent.
Career
In 1902, with borrowed funds, he began manufacturing the compound in an old shed in Dedham, Massachusetts.
The receipt of his first big order, from the Pennsylvania Railroad for a carload lot, assured the success of the venture.
Ellis joined forces with competitors in 1905, to form the Chadeloid Chemical Company, a patent holding and licensing company, which took over his patent and many others relating to paint and varnish removers.
In 1907, with Nathaniel L. Foster, Ellis founded the Ellis-Foster Company to carry on research in industrial chemistry and to patent the results.
With laboratories in both Montclair, New Jersey, and Key West, Florida, and a large staff of chemists and engineers, Ellis produced an average of more than two inventions each month during the next twenty-five years.
In 1913, he patented a method for the hydrogenation of vegetable oils, a process that made possible the cheap production of improved oleomargarine and became the basis for the margarine industry and for the production of other hydrogenated-oil shortenings.
The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey took over Ellis's invention of the "tube and tank process" of cracking crude oil, and by 1940 over forty billion gallons of gasoline had been produced through its use.
During World War I, Ellis synthesized the commercially valuable isopropyl alcohol from the waste gases produced in the cracking of oil. He also invented a process for the preparation of acetone then in wartime demand by the catalytic oxidation of isopropyl alcohol, selling the patent rights to Standard Oil.
With the aid of other research by Ellis, automobile manufacturers were able to increase the power of engines and gasoline refiners to achieve higher-octane gallons of gasoline.
The paint and varnish field continued to be of major concern to Ellis. Hoping to compound the perfect paint, he tried and rejected all the natural oils and resins and then turned to synthetic ones.
In 1925, he produced the first durable lacquer for automobile paint, a combination of synthetic tung oil, soybeans, and synthetic resins that he had developed. These synthetic products saved the American paint industry from paralysis when the import of natural oils and resins from China was curtailed by the Sino-Japanese conflict.
Research on synthetic resins led Ellis into the field of plastics.
Observing the development of a successful phenolic resin plastic by Leo Baekeland, and noting European experiments with urea-formaldehyde resins, Ellis sensed that urea-formaldehyde would also become a molding material.
The processes he developed and patented were the basis for the Unyte Corporation (1932), of which he was the one-third owner; by 1935, his inventions in this field had gained him a large personal fortune.
During his last years, Ellis devoted himself to research on methods of producing vegetables and flowers grown in chemical solutions instead of in soil; his book Soilless Growth of Plants (1938) became a standard work on the subject.
Ellis was granted 753 United States patents, at the time of his death the third highest number granted to any individual. Among his last inventions was a fireproof coating for warplanes to protect against incendiary bullets and an instant-drying ink for newspaper printing.
Carleton Ellis was a charter member of the Inventors' Guild and belonged to a number of professional organizations.
Connections
Ellis married Birdella May Wood of Dayton, Ohio, on November 28, 1901.
They had four children: Eleanor Josephine, Marjorie Olive, Carleton, and Bertram. The family lived in Montclair, New Jersey, the USA, and had a summer home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and a winter home in Nassau, Bahama Islands.