HAPPY 140th BIRTHDAY-VASELINE

It’s difficult to find anything, especially a commercial product, that hasn’t really changed in 140 years. But Vaseline, that miracle product that is used for everything from softening tough skin to keeping beauty queens smiling, may just fit the bill. Vaseline turned up on the market in 1870—and the world has been just a bit softer, maybe a bit greasier since. (More after the break.)

From Rod Wax to Vaseline

Vaseline was the brainchild of England-born, Brooklyn-raised chemist Robert Chesebrough. In 1859, at the tender age of 22, Chesebrough decided to turn his back on his father’s dry goods business and seek his fortune in the nascent oil industry. Young Chesebrough made his way down to Titusville, Pennsylvania, to check out a working oil well. While there, however, Chesebrough made a rather different discovery: At the time, men working on oil rigs were plagued by what they called “rod wax,” a kind of gooey jelly that would get into machinery and cause it to seize up. But rod wax wasn’t all bad: Chesebrough, clearly a very observant guy, noticed that the workers often smeared the substance on burns and rough skin and that it appeared to help in the healing process. Intrigued, he brought a bit of the stuff home.
Chesebrough spent the next 10 years experimenting on it—and himself. With his background as a chemist, Chesebrough ultimately refined the rod wax down to the clear, smeary petroleum jelly we now know today. All the while, he was supposedly using himself as a guinea pig and applying the goo to self-inflicted wounds to track their healing process.
Both Chesebrough and the miracle product survived, and in 1870, he began marketing his Vaseline (supposedly a mash-up of the German word for water, vasser, and the Greek word for olive oil, ‘e’laion or πετρέλαιο). He patented the product in the US in 1872 and formed the Chesebrough Manufacturing Company, based out of Brooklyn, in 1875. According to lore, however, Chesebrough was at first unable to find any pharmacists willing to take a chance on the weird, greasy stuff. So he traveled the countryside, snake oil salesman style, preaching the magic of Vaseline.
It worked, probably because Vaseline was kind of magic: People used it for everything from rescuing chapped skin and protecting baby bottoms from diaper rash to preserving eggs. Long-distance swimmers rubbed it on themselves to save body heat; American Commander Robert Peary brought Vaseline with him on his arctic adventures because it was one of the few things that wouldn’t freeze.
By the late 1880s, Vaseline was selling nationwide at a rate of a jar a minute. Chesebrough expanded the business first to Canada, then to Britain and its colonies; by 1911, the Chesebrough Manufacturing Company had factories churning out jars of Vaseline in Europe and Africa.
Meanwhile, Chesebrough’s faith in his own product never, ever flagged: According to posthumous reports, he swallowed three spoonfuls of it every day, though for what particular ailment remains a mystery. Once, when he contracted pleurisy in his 50s, he had his nurse rub him down with Vaseline every day—he, of course, recovered. He died at the age of 96.
Vaseline lived on: In 1955, the Chesebrough Manufacturing Company merged with Pond’s, the makers of popular cold creams, to become Chesebrough-Pond’s; 32 years later, in 1987, the company sold out to massive personal care company Unilever.