Frederick Walton, an Englishman, is the inventor…
December 1863 CE
In 1855, Walton happened to notice the rubbery, flexible skin of solidified linseed oil (linoxyn) that had formed on a can of oil-based paint and thought that it might form a substitute for India rubber.
Raw linseed oil oxidizes very slowly, but Walton had accelerated the process by heating it with lead acetate and zinc sulfate, which makes the oil form a resinous mass into which lengths of cheap cotton cloth are dipped until a thick coating forms.
The coating is then scraped off and boiled with benzene or similar solvents to form a varnish.
Walton had initially planned to sell his varnish to the makers of water-repellent fabrics such as oilcloth, and had patented the process in 1860.
However, his method had problems: the cotton cloth soon fell apart, and it took months to produce enough of the linoxyn.
Little interest was shown in Walton's varnish.
In addition, his first factory had burned down, and he suffers from persistent and painful rashes.
Walton had soon come up with an easier way to transfer the oil to the cotton sheets, by hanging them vertically and sprinkling the oil from above, and he tried mixing the linoxyn with sawdust and cork dust to make it less tacky.
On December 19, 1863, he applies for a further patent, which reads: "For these purposes canvas or other suitable strong fabrics are coated over on their upper surfaces with a composition of oxidized oil, cork dust, and gum or resin ... such surfaces being afterward printed, embossed, or otherwise ornamented. The back or under surfaces of such fabrics are coated with a coating of such oxidized oils, or oxidized oils and gum or resin, and by preference without an admixture of cork."
At first Walton had called his invention "Kampticon", which was deliberately close to Kamptulicon, the name of an existing floor covering, but he soon changes it to Linoleum, which he derives from the Latin words "linum" (flax) and "oleum" (oil).
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