Soon after oil was found in Pennsylvania during 1859, John
Cassell, publisher and coffee merchant, began importing it to
London. Cassell came up with a name for the substance, inspired
by his own name, cazeline. On 27 November 1862 he placed an
advertisement in The Times that stated, "The Patent Cazeline
Oil, safe, economical, and brilliant … possesses all the
requisites which have so long been desired as a means of
powerful artificial light.
The first use of gasoline to be found in America is in an 1864
Act of Congress which declared a tax on the oil.
Cassell discovered a shopkeeper in Dublin, Samuel Boyd selling
counterfeit cazeline and wrote to him to ask him to stop. Boyd
did not reply, but instead went through his stock, changing with
a single dash of his pen, every ‘C’ into a ‘G’ and gazeline was
born.