The Great Zoline Caper

By Sigur Whitaker
In the early summer of 1914, John Andrus, a Portuguese inventor, was working as a mechanic in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. He told Dr. W. B. Chambers, a prominent auto racing enthusiast living in McKeesport, about the compound he had developed which was not only cheaper than gasoline but also could make a car go faster. Andrus called his compound, Zoline and reportedly it cost 1 ½ cents per gallon to produce.  Chambers notified Carl Fisher in this new compound. Seeing an opportunity similar to when he was approached about what became Prest-O-Lite, Fisher traveled to McKeesport, Pennsylvania.  Fisher and Chambers tested the new product in a motorboat near Pittsburgh.  Favorably impressed, Fisher invited Andrus to test the product at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
 
The first test at IMS was on July 4. After distilling fifteen gallons of water and four pounds of chemicals, five gallons of the solution were poured into a National Motor Vehicle automobile. Norman Gilman, the foreman of National, drove the car nearly 100 miles and stated that there was no perceptible difference in the car’s performance using Zoline rather than gasoline. After the test, the next step was to answer questions of manufacturing expense, combustibility, and efficiency.
 
In preparations for a second test, a 200-gallon still was erected near the Prest-O-Lite plant in Speedway.  Some significant players in the automobile industry were interested in the product including Carl Fisher, James Allison, H. B. Joy (Packard), Roy Chapin (Hudson Motor), A. C. Newby (National Motor Vehicle) and Howard Marmon (Marmon Motor).
 
Two days of testing were scheduled in November. The first test would be under the supervision of the American Automobile Association and witnessed by Russell Huff, consulting engineer of Packard Company, Howard Marmon, William Guy Wall of National Motor Vehicle, the chief chemist of Prest-O-Lite and a chemist from the University of Michigan. A Marmon 41 would be run for 500 miles at a steady speed of 50 mph.
 
The fuel lines froze while testing on a very cold November day after the car had run between 100 miles and 110 miles. More than an hour of testing time was lost. Despite this, there was much enthusiasm about the potential of Zoline. On November 24, John Andrus, Carl Fisher and Dr. W. H. Chambers filed for incorporation with an initial capitalization of $100,000. The directors included Andrus, Fisher, Chambers, James Allison, Howard Marmon, Henry B. Joy, and Ernest W. Bradford from Indianapolis.
 
Henry Joy had a one-hour test run at IMS with a Packard on November 28. It traveled 62.5 miles using the Zoline compound. That same day, a Marmon 41 established a new performance record for 1000 miles at IMS using Zoline. The car’s average speed was 55.8 miles per hour. The test was timed by an electrical timing device and witnessed by John Cox (IMS Scoring Director), Ted Myers (IMS), Fred Wellman (assistant business manager of IMS), Henry Knippenberg, F. E. Edwards and Chester Ricker, the technical representatives of AAA.
 
Newspapers announced that Zoline would be displayed at the 1915 New York Auto Show and that Andrus’ fuel-making stills would be sold to the public so that every car owner could make his own fuel.
 
Fisher had chemists analyze Zoline. They reported that it contained a considerable amount of benzene. Fisher then assigned people to watch Andrus as he manufactured Zoline. That led to a confrontation after which Andrus suddenly returned to McKeesport. Several years later, Fisher discovered that Andrus had covertly switched gasoline for water in the Indianapolis still.
 
In late December the principals announced that they were abandoning the project. They cited the cost of its manufacture was much higher than anticipated and could be practically the same as the cost of manufacturing gasoline. Zoline was reported in the newspapers to be a product of naphthalene, which was distilled in water. Naphthalene was a coal tar product which would require the makers of Zolene to manufacture naphthalene. They would also have to dispose of the by-products of the coal tar distillation.
 
Andrus was undeterred by the backing out of the Indianapolis investors. In 1915, he approached the British Navy which had switched from coal to oil to power their ships in 1911. The British Navy was interested in alternatives to oil. They dispatched Commander Ernest Nibbs to McKeesport where Andrus was preparing to demonstrate it to some New York investors. He poured a gallon of the mixture into his Packard automobile and then drove it around McKeesport until it ran out of fuel. After the New Yorkers left, he told Commander Nibbs that he had something even better that could be used in either freshwater or saltwater which might be of interest. He took out a vial of green-colored liquid, poured it into a bucket of water and then, after putting it in the car, took Nibbs for a drive around McKeesport. He had kept this concoction secret as he didn’t have a patent for it because it was so simple that anyone could make their own fuel. He then said he would demonstrate the process after the British paid him $1 million. Although Nibbs was interested, Andrus cut off talks saying that he had decided to sell the formula to the U. S. Navy.
 
Like the British, the United States Navy was very interested in sources other than oil to fuel their ships. Captain Earl Jessop was involved with improving ship design and Andrus offered a demonstration. At the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Andrus had an empty one-gallon can and a black satchel containing the chemicals. The mixture was put into a motorboat engine which started without issue. He repeated the test the next day using saltwater. The engine ran fine. A second test had scientists observing including Dr. Miller Reese Hutchinson, the chief engineer for Thomas Edison. He noted that the exhaust did not smell like that from gasoline. He thought perhaps Andrus secret formula was acetylene dissolved in acetone. Hutchinson made his own mixture and it ran the Navy engine just like that of Andrus. When the experiment was over, he broke down the engine to discover that the engine was corroded.
 
Captain Jessop arranged a meeting with Josephus Daniels, the Secretary of the Navy. Andrus again demonstrated his process at the Navy Bureau of Engineering. After asking to buy the formula, Andrus demanded $2 million in cash. The Navy responded that they would put the money in escrow which he would receive when he had revealed the formula and taught ten naval officers how to mix the fuel. When he again pressed for the $2 million in cash up-front, the talks ended.
 
Andrus later tried to sell the water-to-fuel mixture to Pittsburgh businessmen F. W. Rackstraw and Grant Shipley. His demonstration went well which resulted in Rackstraw and Andrus sailing to England. In October 1919, he again demonstrated the mixture to some wealthy motor enthusiasts. Rackstraw negotiated the sale of the formula for 60 pounds sterling. Andrus suddenly returned to the United States and when pressed for an explanation, simply refused and disappeared. While they were in England, Rackstraw had uncovered that the secret was acetone. In July 1920, Andrus was arrested for defrauding a Pittsburgh investor of $10,000.
 
When Andrus was demonstrating his concoction to the U. S. Navy, Captain Jessop told reporter Walter Merriweather about the tests. Years later, Merriweather wrote a story about it which was printed in a 1935 edition of Esquire and Readers Digest. In July 1945, CBS Radio broadcast a dramatized version of the article. Andrus filed a lawsuit against CBS in federal court charging libel, slander, and invasion of privacy and demanded $1 million. When the court hearing was held, neither Andrus nor his attorney showed up. This was Andrus’ last attempt to profit from his water-to-fuel concoction. He died in 1953.
 
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