A few miles south of Manhattan, New York, is a town called Travis. Up until 1930, that town was known as Linoleumville—the home of America's first linoleum factory, owned by British inventor Frederick Walton.
Walton's love affair with linoleum began in the 1850s, when, as the story goes, he noticed a skin that had appeared around the top of an old paint can. This skin was the result of a simple reaction occurring between linseed oil in the paint and oxygen in the air. Most oil-based paints contain linseed oil; you've probably peeled off the rubbery solid that forms around the rim without even thinking about it. But Walton couldn't stop thinking about it. He embarked on a series of experiments that would eventually lead to a process for manufacturing floor tiles from linseed oil.
His road to success was a rocky one. In 1860, he filed a patent for a linoleum manufacturing method, but the method was by no means perfect. Walton had worked out that by adding other ingredients to the mix, such as lead acetate, he could get the linseed oil to react quicker. However, producing large amounts of the material was an arduous process and the big manufacturing companies were unwilling to invest. Even after setting up his own company, Walton found it hard to generate any interest.
Success came, finally, off the back of a mass marketing campaign, and in 1872, Walton's product went global when he opened his American factory. Today, lino is manufactured from a combination of resins, powdered limestone, cork, and of course, linseed oil. Sheets of the mixture are pressed onto a canvas backing material.
A waterproof, wipe-clean wonder, linoleum was the floor covering of choice until the 1960s, when it was ripped up and replaced by vinyl.
