TEL came into use in the early 20’s as an inexpensive way of booting the octane rating which paved
the way for higher compression ratios for internal combustion engines used in aircraft and
automobiles.
Here is a line excerpted from wiki: “Founded in 1923Ethyl Corp was formed by General Motors and
Standard Oil of New Jersey (ESSO). General Motors had the "use patent" for TEL as an antiknock,
based on the work of Thomas Midgley, Jr., and ESSO had the patent for the manufacture of TEL.”
Prior to the introduction of TEL many of the early engines ran on white gas. When I was a kid in the
40’s, small stationary engines still ran on white gas which had a very low octane rating somewhere in
the neighborhood of 50-60 and it was carried by most gas stations. Today Colman gas and Naphtha are
very similar to what was called white gas.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
Last edited by Denny Graham; 02/19/2012 8:52 PM.
