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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gasoline pill | 2/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_pill | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:20:09.141566+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Gasoline pills in fiction == The storyline of the 1943 Laurel and Hardy film, Jitterbugs, revolves around a con man (Bob Bailey) selling gas pills during the fuel rationing days of WWII. In the 1949 motion picture Free For All, Robert Cummings starred as a scientist who claimed to have invented a pill that turned water into gasoline. The 1940s television/radio show People Are Funny performed a stunt in which an unsuspecting crowd at Hollywood and Vine were sold "Atom Pills" at a quarter apiece. A "scientist" claimed that one pill could do the work of a hundred gallons of gasoline. When the stunt was revealed, few of the dozens who had fought to buy the pills came up to get their money back. In the television sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies, Jethro Bodine claimed to have devised a water to gasoline pill that ran the Clampetts' old truck on water. In an episode of the 1960s American sitcom The Munsters, "The Sleeping Cutie", Grandpa invents a gasoline pill. A season three episode of the 1950s American television show, Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond, "Where Are They?", which originally aired 13 December 1960, presented a story about a man calling himself Charles Elton. Elton allegedly demonstrated to government representatives in 1917 a pill that costs 2 cents that can turn 10 gallons of water into a fuel that can power an auto engine. After his successful exhibition, Elton vanishes. The 1977 Italian comedy movie Squadra Antitruffa (meaning "Anti-scam Squad") presents a story about a scammer repeatedly demonstrating "ionized hydrogen" pills, made in Japan, that are added to a car's fuel tank after filling it with water, which is then allegedly turned into fuel. The scammer then convinces the marks to buy a number of useless pills at 10000 lire each, until a rough-mannered cop exposes the scam and mocks the scammer saying "he fills his fuel tank with turds". In E.L. Doctorow's historical novel Ragtime, Henry Ford must deal with a man claiming to have invented a water-to-gasoline pill; possibly a reference to Louis Enricht. In episode 254 of The Simpsons, "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes," Homer is trapped on a mysterious island with, among others, a Number 27 who is trapped there because she knows how to turn water into gasoline.
== See also == Firepower International, purveyor of a fraudulent gasoline additive pill Hongcheng Magic Liquid Oxyhydrogen Stanley Meyers' water fuel cell Water-fuelled car Water injection
== References ==