Science: Gas From Coal

If Germany can make gasoline—floods of it, in fact—out of coal, then the U.S. can do it too, and probably a darn sight better! Not only can but should, agreed Harold Ickes, his Bureau of Mines and the Senate Appropriations Committee last week. They plan to build an $85,000 pilot plant at Pittsburgh to imitate the German hydrogenation techniques whereby carbon (from coal) is combined with hydrogen to form the group of light hydrocarbon compounds called gasoline.

The Germans, of course, have almost no petroleum. But neither (relatively speaking) has the U.S. Any day now—perhaps in only 15 years—the last U.S. oil...