Dry cleaning is a process of cleaning clothes and fabrics with solutions that do not contain water. The practice has been traced back to France where around 1825 turpentine was used in the cleaning this process. According to Albert R. Martin and George P. Fulton in Dry cleaning, Technology and Theory, published in 1958, the tradition passed down regarding the origins of dry cleaning states that the process was discovered when "a can of 'camphene,' a fuel for oil lamps, was accidentally spilled on a gown and found to clean it, and this discovery led to the first dry cleaning establishment." Because of this, dry cleaning was referred to as "French cleaning" even into the second half of the twentieth century.

By the late 1800s, naphtha, gasoline, benzene, and benzol—the most common solvent—were being used for dry cleaning. Fire hazards associated with using gasoline for...