The company's first refining experience proved the industry truism that a refinery is merely a huge experimental laboratory which is under constant improvement. Actually, the installations at East Chicago and Kansas City were outmoded soon after they went on stream for the first time.

First construction at the two new refineries consisted of shell stills which could produce 5,000 barrels daily of gasoline from the lightest fractions distilled off the top. After these shell stills were built, Sinclair's research chief E. W. Isom developed a thermal cracking method to produce more gasoline from crude oil.

Under Isom's new system, crude oil could be charged, fired, heated, pressurized and fractionated in a nearly continuous operation which yielded as high as 26 percent gasoline. Later, after improvements, the gasoline yield soared to 55 percent of the charge at a time when the industry average was much lower.

As Sinclair's gasoline output increased, each technological advance improved the quantity. The accent of the entire industry was on gasoline--all other petroleum products were subordinate. The race of producers to supply more and more gallons of fuel for the burgeoning auto industry had begun.

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