Walter O. Snelling

Walter Otheman Snelling (December 13, 1880 – September 10, 1965) was a chemist who contributed to the development of explosives, aircraft ordnance, and liquefied petroleum gas.

Early life and education Snelling was born in Washington, D.C., on December 13, 1880, the elder of two sons of Walter Comonfort Snelling (1859–1893) and Alice Lee Hornor (1861–1919). Walter Comonfort Snelling was an inventor who patented an adding machine. Alice Lee Hornor, from a Quaker family, became a suffragette who studied law and medicine and traveled and wrote extensively. He had a full brother, Henry Hornor Snelling, and a half-sister, Voleta Alice Moque.

Snelling attended George Washington University, where he received a B.S. in 1904, and then attended Harvard University, where he received a second B.S. in 1905. He then attended Yale University, and received a Ph.D. from George Washington University in 1907.

Career From 1907 to 1910, he worked for the United States Geological Survey, initially in Washington, D.C., and later in Pittsburgh. He invented an underwater detonator that was credited with saving the U.S. government $500,000 a year during the construction of the Panama Canal.

In 1910, Snelling became chemist-in-charge of the explosives laboratory at the United States Bureau of Mines. A major focus of his job was mine safety, but he also researched the production of propane, Snelling highlighted propane as a volatile component in gasoline in 1910, built a distilling apparatus, and separated it into liquid and gaseous components. The volatility of these lighter hydrocarbons caused them to be known as "wild" because of the high vapor pressures of unrefined gasoline.

On March 31, 1910, The New York Times reported on Snelling's work with liquefied gas, reporting that, "...a steel bottle will carry enough gas to light an ordinary home for three weeks."

Snelling's work with "wild gas" became the basis for a patent critical to Snelling's next venture, development of a commercial method to produce liquefied petroleum gas, mostly propane. A separate method of producing LP gas through compression was created by Frank Peterson and its patent granted on July 2, 1912. In 1913, Snelling sold his propane patent for $50,000 to Frank Phillips, the founder of Phillips Petroleum Company.

Snelling worked as a consultant and private researcher until 1917 when he was offered full-time employment at the Trojan Powder Company. He eventually became the company's director of research. Snelling remained with Trojan from 1917 until his retirement in 1954, and continued to consult for them until 1957.

In 1946, he became a consultant to the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission, serving as a member of the Raw Materials Advisory Committee until 1960 when it was dissolved. By 1960, he held 179 patents, most in the areas of propane, oil-cracking, explosives, and ordnance. He was awarded an honorary doctor of science from Lehigh University.

Personal life In 1919, Snelling married Helen Marjorie Gahring (1901–1976) in Union City, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of his first customer, John Gahring. The Snellings had seven children and lived their entire married lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The family purchased a home at the edge of the city's West Park in either 1940 or 1941, and Walter remained there until his death on September 10, 1965.

One of their sons, Richard Arkwright Snelling, was the Governor of Vermont. Another son, Charles Darwin Snelling, was appointed chairman of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, a life trustee of Cedar Crest College in Allentown, a member of the Propane Education and Research Council, and past president of the Pennsylvania Society. He published a short memoir in New York Times columnist David Brooks' blog.

In popular culture On an episode of the animated television series King of the Hill, character Hank Hill refers to Snelling as the "father of modern propane."