James Young

                             James Young (1811- 1883)

James Young was born in Glasgow in 1811 and was a famous chemist noted for the method he developed to distill paraffin from coal and oil shales. After much experimentation Young could obtain a liquid which he called ‘paraffin oil’. Establishing a factory at Bathgate, Scotland in 1851 Young extracted oil from torbanite, lamosite and coal to manufacture a variety of oils including paraffin. By 1858 Young was using the oil shales in West Lothian, Scotland to produce oils. Young continued to sell both paraffin oil and paraffin lamps round the world , subsequently being nick-named ‘Paraffin’ Young. Paraffin continued to be used until the end of the nineteenth century when it was replaced by the much cheaper free-flowing petroleum.