30 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
30 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
title: "Gasoline pill"
|
|
chunk: 2/2
|
|
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_pill"
|
|
category: "reference"
|
|
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
|
|
date_saved: "2026-05-05T09:20:09.141566+00:00"
|
|
instance: "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 == |