The Northern Wyoming Herald

Convict Freed Through Invention to Extract Gas.

A. G. Crane, convict confined in the Nevada state penitentiary has been freed because of his invention of a system of extracting gasoline from shale and given his citizenship through the efforts of Secretary of Interior Franklin M. Lane and Dr. R. T. Day, the celebrated oil authority.

The invention has proven so successful that a company with two and a half million capital has been organized to utilize the process in utilizing shale, paraffine and other by-products for the production of oil and gasoline.

The young man who was imprisoned for alleged insurance frauds had for years been experimenting on the process and continued the work while confined in the Nevada penitentiary. He was permitted to work far into the night and prosecuted his experiments with such energy and untiring zeal as to win the approbation of the officials.

So confident was Crane that he had solved the problem that the warden permitted him to address a letter to Secretary of War Baker offering the government the use of his invention for the period of the war. It is claimed that the new process will take the mountains of rock formations of Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and California yield an immense profit, particularly on oil from which the government authorities could distill just the kind of gasoline needed for the proposed airplane program.