Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 2.djvu/294

 try, Rockefeller had acquired by 1882 about all the processes of manufacturing known, both patented and free. These processes, including all the essential ones of to-day, had been developed entirely outside of the Standard Oil Company. As early as 1865, the year Mr. Rockefeller went into the business, William Wright wrote an exhaustive book on the Oil Regions of Pennsylvania. Among other things, he reported



quite fully what was being done in the refining of petroleum. He found that in several factories they were making naphtha, gasoline and benzine; that three grades of illuminating oils—"prime white," "standard white" and "straw colour"—were made everywhere; that paraffine, refined to a pure white article like that of to-day, was manufactured in quantities by the Downer works; and that lubricating oils were beginning to be made.

In 1872, the year that Mr. Rockefeller took things in hand, all of these original products had been greatly extended, as