were carbon tetrachloride and trichloroethylene (TCE). Carbon tetrachloride was first used as a stain remover in the early 1890s in Germany and later extended to dry-cleaning use by the 1920s. TCE was introduced in 1930, it had the downside of being incompatible with acetate dyes.

In 1930, chemists Sylvia Stoesser, John Grebe, and J. Lawrence Amos of Dow Chemical suggested