In 1849, Charles Blachford Mansfield rectified coal tar and identified fractions which he hypothesized to be cumole and cymole.

[3] In 1862, Warren De la Rue and Hugo Müller (1833-1915) proposed the term pseudocumole for the fractions heavier than xylole.

[4] When three years later American chemist Cyrus Warren (1824-1891) attempted to reproduce Mansfield's results, he determined that the oil boiling at 170° has the same formula as cumole, not cymole, and suggested to name it isocumole.

Ernst and Wilhelm Rudolph Fittig, who first prepared it from bromoxylene and iodomethane in 1866 by a Wurtz–Fittig reaction developed two years earlier.

[16] 1,2,4-Trimethylbenzene dissolved in mineral oil is used as a liquid scintillator[17] in particle physics experiments such as NOνA and Borexino.