Cooking Gas

Kingsford was a relative of Henry Ford who saw that Ford's Model T production lines were producing a large amount of wood scraps that were just being discarded. Kingsford suggested to Ford that a charcoal manufacturing facility be established next to the assembly line and sell the charcoal, with the Ford name, in Ford dealerships. After Kingsford's death, the company was renamed Kingsford Charcoal Co. in his honor.
George Stephen created the hemispherical grill design, jokingly called "Sputnik" by Stephen's neighbors. Stephen, a welder, worked for Weber Brothers Metal Works, a metal fabrication shop primarily concerned with welding steel spheres together to make buoys. Stephen was tired of wind blowing ash onto his food when he grilled so he took the lower half of a buoy, welded three steel legs onto it, and fabricated a shallower hemisphere for use as a lid. He took the results home and following some initial success started the Weber-Stephen Products Co.
The outdoor gas grill was invented in the 1960s in Little Rock, Arkansas by William G. Wepfer and Melton Lancaster while working for ARKLA, the Arkansas and Louisiana power company. Wepfer, a graduate of the U.S.Naval Academy, was Director of Marketing, charged with finding new ways to sell natural gas to ARKLA residential customers, and therefore bought a basic charcoal grill and re-designed it in the Wepfer's garage so that natural gas provided the fuel for the grill.
The majority of gas grills follow the cart grill design concept: the grill unit itself is attached to a wheeled frame that holds the fuel tank. The wheeled frame may also support side tables and other features.