Luther Atwood

During this time Atwood took up an interest in chemistry and first experimented with a still in which he made a peppermint oil extract.

[1][2] Atwood's "coup oil", a product of coal tar, picric acid and benzole, was used as a machinery lubricant especially in the railroad industry and factories.

He became superintendent of the Glasgow oil works in Scotland, Geary Miller & Company, where the boghead mineral was being processed under the Scottish chemist James Young.

Atwood succeeded in refining his process to produce an oil that was colorless, odorless and burned in lamp wicks with brilliancy.

In that year Atwood invented the "meerschaum process" for the distillation of coal and patented the "tobacco pipe still" or retort.

This consisted of an open kiln of masonry, holding from twenty-five to one hundred tons of coal or shale, which was fired from the top.

Atwood and his brother William received gold medals from New York state and Pennsylvania.

The patents were highly important at first, but became worthless by the development of petroleum oil wells in Pennsylvania.

[4] Atwood was married in Waltham, Massachusetts on 1 January 1857 to Catherine Lucy, daughter of Thomas J. Marsh.