Linoleum - History

History

Linoleum was invented by Englishman Frederick Walton. 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; Walton accelerated the process by heating it with lead acetate and zinc sulfate. This made the oil form a resinous mass into which lengths of cheap cotton cloth were dipped until a thick coating formed. The coating was then scraped off and boiled with benzene or similar solvents to form a varnish. Walton initially planned to sell his varnish to the makers of water-repellent fabrics such as oilcloth, and 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 his varnish. In addition, his first factory burned down, and he had persistent and painful rashes.

Walton soon came up with an easier way to transfer the oil to the cotton sheets by hanging them vertically and sprinkling the oil from above, and tried mixing the linoxyn with sawdust and cork dust to make it less tacky. In 1863 he applied for a further patent, which read "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 called his invention "Kampticon", which was deliberately close to Kamptulicon, the name of an existing floor covering, but he soon changed it to Linoleum, which he derived from the Latin words linum ("flax") and oleum ("oil"), and in 1864 established the Linoleum Manufacturing Company Ltd., with a factory at Staines, near London. The new product did not prove immediately popular, mainly due to intense competition from the makers of Kamptulicon and oilcloth, and the company operated at a loss for its first five years, until Walton began an intensive advertising campaign and opened two shops in London for the exclusive sale of Linoleum.

Other inventors began their own experiments after Walton took out his patent, and in 1871 William Parnacott took out a patent for a method of producing linoxyn by blowing hot air into a tank of linseed oil for several hours, then cooling the material in trays. Unlike Walton's process, which took weeks, Parnacott's method took only a day or two, although the quality of the linoxyn was not as good. Despite this, many manufacturers opted to use the less expensive Parnacott process.

Walton soon faced competition from other manufacturers, including a company which bought the rights to Parnacott's process, and launched its own floor covering which it named Corticine, from the Latin cortex ("bark" or "rind"). Corticine was mainly made of cork dust and linoxyn without a cloth backing, and became popular as it was cheaper than linoleum.

By 1869 Walton's factory in Staines, England was exporting to Europe and the United States. In 1877, the Scottish town of Kirkcaldy, in Fife, became the largest producer of linoleum in the world, with no fewer than six floorcloth manufacturers in the town, most notably Michael Nairn & Co., who had been producing floorcloth since 1847.

Walton opened the American Linoleum Manufacturing Company in 1872 on Staten Island, in partnership with Joseph Wild, the company's town being named Linoleumville (renamed Travis in 1930). It was the first U.S. linoleum manufacturer, but was soon followed by the American Nairn Linoleum Company, established by Sir Michael Nairn in 1887 (later the Congoleum Nairn Company, and The Congoleum Corporation of America), in Kearny, New Jersey. Congoleum now manufactures sheet vinyl and no longer has a linoleum line.