UOP Inc. stock certificate 1975 (oil and refinery services)

Collectible stock with a fun vignette of a classical male figure holding a globe in front of refinery and oil field scenes. Issued and cancelled. Dated 1975.

UOP LLC, formerly known as Universal Oil Products, is a multi-national company developing and delivering technology to the petroleum refining, gas processing, petrochemical production, and major manufacturing industries. The company's roots date back to 1914, when the revolutionary Dubbs thermal cracking process created the technological foundation for today's modern refining industry. In the ensuing decades, UOP engineers generated thousands of patents, leading to important advances in process technology, profitability consultation, and equipment design.

UOP was founded in 1914 to exploit the market potential of patents held by inventors Jesse A. Dubbs and his son, Carbon Petroleum (C. P.) Dubbs. Perhaps because he was born in Pennsylvania oil country, Jesse Dubbs was enamored with the oil business. He even named his son Carbon after one of the elemental constituents of oil. Later, Carbon added the P. to make his name "euphonious," he said. People started calling him "Petroleum" for fun, and the name stuck. C. P.'s son and grandson were also named Carbon, but each had a different middle initial.

When founded in 1914 it was a privately held firm known as the National Hydrocarbon Company. J. Ogden Armour provided initial seed money and kept the firm going the first years it lost money. Most of the losses were incurred during lengthy legal battles with petroleum firms that were using technology patented by Dubbs.

In 1919 the firm's name became Universal Oil Products. By 1931, petroleum firms saw a possible competitive advantage to owning UOP. A consortium of firms banded together to purchase the firm. These firms were Shell Oil Company, Standard Oil Company of California, Standard Oil Company of Indiana, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, The Texas Company, and N. V. de Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij. This worried oil firms that were not part of the group and it helped prompt the Justice Department to begin an investigation of this arrangement as a possible violation of antitrust laws.

The oil firms placed the assets of UOP into a trust to support the American Chemical Society. In 1959 UOP went public and the income from that sale still provides monies to the American Chemical Society to administer grants to universities worldwide. In August 1988 Union Carbide Corporation and AlliedSignal formed a joint venture combining the latter's wholly owned subsidiary, UOP Inc., and the Catalyst, Adsorbents and Process Systems (CAPS) business of Union Carbide.

AlliedSignal acquired Honeywell in 1999 and assumed the latter's name. In 2005, what was now known as Honeywell acquired Union Carbide's stake in UOP, making it again a wholly owned subsidiary.