Aerosol

Who invented the aerosols?

Erik Andreas Rotheim (19 September 1898 - 18 September 1938) was a Norwegian professional chemical engineer and inventor.

He was born in Kristiania, earned his engineering degree in Switzerland and established his own company at home in Oslo in 1925. He is best known for invention of the aerosol spray can, the patent application for which he submitted in 1926. The Norwegian patent was granted in June 1929. He was awarded the United States patent for the concept on 30 September 1927.

Prior to the issuance of the patent Rotheim had negotiated an agreement with Alf Bjercke's paint factory in 1928, but commercial success was initially limited. The patent was sold to a US company for NOK 100,000. Commercial exploitation of the patent was not significant until it was introduced in the United States in the 1940s. Norway Post celebrated the invention by issuing a stamp in 1998. After Rotheim's death the technology made a significant advance with its incorporation into the airbrush. And in the 1940s improvements to the underlying principle of the spray head by the Americans Lyle D. Goodhue and William N. Sullivan allowed the technology to be further adapted, first to insect control, and later in various other applications.

What is an aerosol?

Technically, an aerosol is a suspension of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in a gas. Examples are smoke, oceanic haze, air pollution, smog and CS gas. In general conversation, aerosol usually refers to an aerosol spray can or the output of such a can. The word aerosol derives from the fact that matter "floating" in air is a suspension (a mixture in which solid or liquid or combined solid-liquid particles are suspended in a fluid). To differentiate suspensions from true solutions, the term sol evolved—originally meant to cover dispersions of tiny (sub-microscopic) particles in a liquid....