Walter O. Snelling

Walter O. Snelling
Dr. Walter O. Snelling
Born	Walter Otheman Snelling December 13, 1880 Washington, D.C.
Died	September 10, 1965 (aged 84) Allentown, Pennsylvania
Residence	United States
Citizenship	United States
Fields	Chemist
Institutions	U.S. Bureau of Mines American Gasol
Alma mater	Harvard University Yale University George Washington University
Known for	Discovery of propane
Notable awards	Edward Longstreth Medal (1962); Honorary Doctor of Science, Lehigh University

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

Walter Otheman Snelling, born December 13, 1880, was the elder of two sons of Walter Comonfort Snelling (1859-1893) and Alice Alice Lee Hornor (1861-1919). Walter Comonfort Snelling was an inventor who patented an adding machine.Alice Lee Hornor, from an old Quaker family, became a suffragette who studied law and medicine and traveled and wrote extensively. On June 27, 1894, she remarried, to John Oliver Moque. In addition to his full brother, Henry Hornor Snelling, Walter had a half-sister, Voleta Alice Moque.

Snelling studied at George Washington University, receiving a B.S. in 1904, and at Harvard, receiving a B.S. in 1905. He then attended Yale and received a Ph.D. from George Washington University in 1907.

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

In 1910, Snelling became chemist-in-charge of the explosives laboratory at the U.S. Bureau of Mines. A major focus of his job was mine safety, but he also researched the production of propane. Snelling identified propane as a volatile component in gasoline in 1910. Snelling built a distilling apparatus and separated "wild gasoline" 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 the New York Times reported on Dr. Snelling's work with liquefied gas and that "...a steel bottle will carry enough [gas] to light an ordinary home for three weeks."