n 1865 William Foster Nye, a Cape Cod-born adventurer and entrepreneur in the true American style, who had tried his hand at various trades, decided to settle in New Bedford, a whaling port south of Boston, Massachusetts. There he opened a small shop selling oils (including whale oil) and paraffin.

In the same town, a watchmaker named Ezra Kelly had discovered that oil extracted from dolphin jaws and brains was a superior substance for lubricating delicate mechanisms like watches and sewing machines. Nye immediately grasped the business potential, and lost no time in creating his own brand of dolphin oil. With his marketing acumen (and a little help from a trade journal editor) he persuaded the prominent watch manufacturer Cross and Beguelin (whose pocket watches were equipped with Longines movements) to adopt his fine dolphin oils.

Within a few years, Waltham, Elgin, the Chicago Watchmakers Institute and even the “keepers and repairers of the Strasbourg Cathedral clock” were using Nye’s dolphin oil to lubricate their gears. In July 1881, Nye’s, W.-F., New Bedford oils received a “third-class bronze medal at the National Watch Exhibition and International Machine and Tool Exhibition”, awarded by “the watchmaking employees of La Chaux-de-Fonds.”

Was it truly a massacre, as Stefano D’Arrigo suggests? Well, as is so often the case, as demand grew and competition intensified, dolphin and whale populations plummeted due to increased hunting. Mechanisation allowed the firm to fill up to 4,000 bottles of oil per hour without human intervention. The oil’s quality was undeniable. “Not only did this dolphin oil contain no impurities that could corrode or blacken the pinions, it maintained its lubricating properties from -50° to +93°C.”

Over the course of a few decades, the porpoise population declined sharply. Nevertheless, whale oil, which was primarily used for public lighting, was replaced by paraffin and later by gas and electricity. Synthetic oils gradually supplanted dolphin oil in precision mechanics.

In addition, bans on dolphin and whale fishing multiplied as these species were pushed closer to extinction. The massacre finally ended with the enactment of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972.

Nye’s, however, survived. Today, 175 years after its founding, and following its acquisition by the Fuchs Lubricant Company, Nye Lubricants continues to supply a range of synthetic lubricants for a range of industries – from semiconductors to wind turbines, optics to watchmaking, and medtech to aerospace. From dolphins to the stars, indeed.