Among several variants of thermal cracking methods (variously known as the "Shukhov cracking process", "Burton cracking process", "Burton-Humphreys cracking process", and "Dubbs cracking process") Vladimir Shukhov, a Russian engineer, invented and patented, the first in 1891 (Russian Empire, patent no. 12926, November 7, 1891). One installation was used to a limited extent in Russia, but development was not followed up; In the first decade of the 20th century the American engineers William Merriam Burton and Robert E. Humphreys independently developed and patented a similar process as U.S. patent 1,049,667 on June 8, 1908. Among its advantages was that both the condenser and the boiler were continuously kept under pressure.
In its earlier versions it was a batch process, rather than continuous, and many patents were to follow in the US and Europe, though not all were practical. In 1924, a delegation from the American Sinclair Oil Corporation visited Shukhov. Sinclair Oil apparently wished to suggest that the patent of Burton and Humphreys, in use by Standard Oil, was derived from Shukhovs patent for oil cracking, as described in the Russian patent. If that could be established, it could strengthen the hand of rival American companies wishing to invalidate the Burton-Humphreys patent. In the event Shukhov satisfied the Americans that in principle Burtons method closely resembled his 1891 patents, though his own interest in the matter was primarily to establish that "the Russian oil industry could easily build a cracking apparatus according to any of the described systems without being accused by the Americans of borrowing for free".
At that time, just a few years after the Russian Revolution and brutal Russian Civil War, the Soviet Union was desperate to develop industry and earn foreign exchange, so their oil industry eventually did obtain much of their technology from foreign companies, largely American. At about that time, fluid catalytic cracking was being explored and developed and soon replaced most of the purely thermal cracking processes in the fossil fuel processing industry. The replacement was not complete; many types of cracking, including pure thermal cracking, still are in use, depending on the nature of the feedstock and the products required to satisfy market demands. Thermal cracking remains important, for example in producing naphtha, gas oil, and coke, and more sophisticated forms of thermal cracking have been developed for various purposes. These include visbreaking, steam cracking, and coking.