Robert Chesebrough acid or an open flame, then spread the clear jelly on his injuries while demonstrating past injuries, healed, he claimed, by his miracle product. To further create demand, he gave out free samples. Chesebrough opened his first factory in 1870. The first known reference to the name Vaseline is in his U.S. patent: “I, Robert Chesebrough, have invented a new and useful product from petroleum which I have named 'Vaseline…'" . The word is believed to come from German "Wasser" (water) + (oil). Chesebrough lived to be 96 years old and was such a believer in Vaseline that he claimed
Star jelly of grass". <poem>As he whose quicker eye doth trace A false star shot to a mark'd place Do's run apace, And, thinking it to catch, A jelly up do snatch</poem> That the Starres eat...that those falling Starres, as some call them, which are found on the earth in the form of a trembling gelly, are their excrement. When I had taken up what I supposed a fallen star I found I had been cozened with a jelly. <poem>Swift as the shooting star, that gilds the night With rapid transient Blaze, she runs, she flies; Sudden she stops nor longer can