Shell Oil

During the 1940s through the 1970s, Shell Oil sponsored a contest called The Wood River Competition. The winner was the car that achieved the best mileage. In 1973, the winner was a 1959 Opel T-1 and it achieved 376.59 miles per gallon.

There is a book entitled Fuel Economy of the Gasoline Engine, edited by D.R. Blackmore and A. Thomas, both of Shell Research Limited of the Thornton Research Centre in the U.K. It was published in 1977 by John Wiley & Sons, New York. One of the contributors to this book was a G.A. Harrow. Geoffrey A. Harrow is listed as one of the inventors of a device for vaporizing fuel, U.S. patent number 3,927,651. The assignee is Shell Oil. Walter D. Mills is the other inventor on this patent.

Mills is also the inventor for another U.S. patent, also a device for vaporizing fuel, U.S. patent number 3,957,024. Again, the assignee is Shell Oil.

In the above mentioned book, it was noted that test vehicles modified by Shell engineers were achieving fuel efficiencies of between 244 and 376 miles per gallon.

To see photos of the car that got just over 376 mpg:

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/351903_needle20.html

The above patents can be seen on the U.S. Patent Office website. These patents are now in the public domain.

So who became the Director of Shell’s Thornton Research Center right after WW II?—Ralph Bagnold, commanding officer of Britain’s Long Range Desert Group during the war. Bagnold was a scientific genius on the order of Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton. (For more on Ralph Bagnold please read my short story, BAGNOLD-- A brief history of Ralph Bagnold, a scientific genius, from my short story collection, Northwoods and Other Short Stories.)