Life, 1927-08-04 · page 5 of 40
Life — August 4, 1927 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is **not satire or a political cartoon**—it's a straightforward product advertisement for Ethyl Gasoline, published by the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation of New York. The page promotes the benefits of high-compression engine fuel through technical explanation and visual appeal. The illustration shows various automobiles arranged in a decorative pattern, emphasizing product availability. The advertisement explains that Ethyl Gasoline's anti-knock properties allow engines to operate at higher compression ratios, delivering greater power and performance than ordinary gasoline. This appears to be from the early automobile era when fuel technology was still developing and competitive differentiation through chemical additives was a novel marketing strategy.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Get the benefits of high UTOMOTIVE engineers have long known that the efficiency of gasoline engines increases as their compression is raised, The compression of the present day automobile is as high as the limitations of ordinary gasoline permit. Gasoline is not a perfect fuel. It explodes too soon (i. e., “knocks” and loses power) when compressed beyond certainlimits. That is why automotive re- search devoted many years to the development of “ETHYL” fluid, which, when mixed in very small quantities with motor gasoline, eliminates its knocking tenden- cies and makes it a high compres- ETHYL GASOLINE CORPORATION, sion fucl. The fuel so mixed is Ethyl! Gasoline. Ethyl Gasoline has brought the benefits of high compression — greater power and flexibility, faster pick-up, reduced gear- shifting —to hundreds of thou- sands of motorists. This is because carbon deposits raise the com- pression of your engine beyond the point at which it was designed to perform efficiently with ordi- nary gasoline. Try Ethyl Gasoline to-ds joy a driving satisfaction and engine performance that you have never before experienced with your car. The “ETHYL” trade- mark shown above identifies the Ethyl Gasoline pump. 25 BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY What high compression means to you THe principle of high compres- sion is readily understood. The tighter you pack the powder charge in a muzzle loading gun, the greater the force given the bullet. Similarly, the tighter gasoline vapor and air are compressed in the combustion cham- ber (the space between the head of the cylinder and the topof the piston) before ignition, the greater the power derived from the explosion. Increasing compression therefore simply means decreasing the size of the combustion spa: accomplished mechanically through the formation of carbon, Higher compression means @ more powerful and flexible car, less gear shifting, faster pick-up. In short, a performance impossible with lower com- pressionand the use of ordinary gasolin ETHYL GASOLINE comicbooks.com