This page is a guide to resources available for historians working in the area of fuels and octane / HUCR research.
Original Documents: Ethyl leaded gasoline and alternatives is a Google Doc that provides full original documents of hundreds of studies, reports, hearings, and articles about leaded gasoline and ethyl alcohol.
Timeline of leaded gasoline and alternatives
Historical overviews of the leaded gasoline issues, including:
- A ‘gift of God’?: The public health controversy over leaded gasoline during the 1920. American Journal Public Health, April 1985
- AJPH editorial April 1985
- Industry criticism and response, Dec. 1985
- Charles F. Kettering and the 1921 discovery of tetraethyl lead SAE Journal, 1994
- Henry Ford, Charles Kettering and the Fuel of the Future, SAH 1998
- Ethyl Leaded gasoline: How a classic occupational disease became an international public health disaster, International Journal of Occupational and Public Heath, 2004
Videos about leaded gasoline and ethanol:
This video is a discussion among a dozen historians and scientific experts on the history of leaded gasoline, post May 20, 2025.
Science communicator Derek Muller of Veritasium posted this video (below) on the history of Ethyl leaded gasoline on Earth Day, April 22, 2022.
Late Lessons – Early Warnings 2004 – Denmark, EEC
Popular history videos
History of Simple Things
Engineering explained