The USF Oracle has been the student newspaper of USF since 1966, when it replaced the Campus Edition of the Tampa Daily Times. The USF Libraries have been digitizing the print editions of the Oracle from 1966 onward and adding them to the USF Oracle Archive in our online digital collections.
The USF Oracle Archive gives readers an example of how USF has consistently been at the forefront of research and development with this article from May 30, 1980 about on campus production of gasohol.
Ethanol as a fuel source for automobiles has been experimented with and used since the 1890s, but it hadn’t caught on as a fuel of choice until a push to reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign oil resulted in renewed interest in ethanol/gasoline blends in the mid 1970s (Keeny, 2011). Dr. Suarez at USF had been working on alcohol/ethanol and petroleum blends since WWII, and on May 30, 1980, was redoubling his efforts so that USF could produce its own gasohol. Gasohol is now known as an E10 fuel mixture and has been adopted in the 21st century by many countries to reduce emissions and costs.
Learn more about USF’s history in our Digital Collections!
References
Keeny, D. (2011) An Ethanol Timeline: How We Got Here. Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. https://clf.jhsph.edu/viewpoints/ethanol-timeline-how-we-got-here