How many of you right now have a jar of Vaseline somewhere in your house? Turns out it took a young chemist to visit Pennsylvania for petroleum jelly to have been invented. It was 1859 when Robert Chesebrough traveled to Titusville. That's an in eastern Crawford County, often referred to as the birthplace of the oil industry. Workers had noticed an interesting byproduct of their drilling, a substance they called rod wax, not so good for their drilling machinery.
But the workers reported that the stuff seemed to help heal their minor burns and wound. Chesebrough was intrigued. He began testing and refining the rod wax, working to purify it. Eventually, he made it into lighter colored gel that similar to the petroleum jelly were used to. By 1865, he'd patented his creation as the Vaseline healing jelly still sold today.
