Oil

   The vernacular for petroleum, a naturally occurring liquid composed of hydrocarbons, the industrial use of which increased dramatically during the nineteenth century. Much of the exploration and industrial development of uses for oil was done by American oil companies. Oil usage was low at the beginning of the period. Small quantities were gathered from natural oil seeps to be used as pitch to seal boats, as axle grease or for medicinal purpose. In the 1840s, Canadian Abraham Gesner invented kerosene, and the first modern oil well was sunk in 1848 by the Russian engineer F. N. Semyonov near Baku on the Caspian Sea. It soon replaced whale oil as the fuel for lighting in homes and offices. By 1900, gasoline for internal combustion engines and heavy oil to power ships - especial naval vessels, since the age of sail depended on massive quantities of coal for fuel - had caused the demand for oil to increase dramatically. Together with the importance of oil to industrial development generally, the invention of the Parson’s turbine engine increased the range of ships, for commerce and naval warfare, and made oil a strategic commodity. The growing demand for oil was supplied by the cable-tool method of oil well drilling. In 1859, Captain Edwin L. Drake drilled the first oil well in western Pennsylvania.

   The rotary drill method was used in 1901 at Spindletop, Texas, to bring in the first gusher. Discoveries were made in California, Canada, the Dutch East Indies, Iran, Mexico, Peru, Romania, and Venezuela and elsewhere by increasingly powerful oil companies, the greatest of which was John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust. The Anglo-Persain Oil Company, founded in 1909, was the first company to exploit the oil potential of the Middle East.

   See also <>.

   FURTHER READING:

    Giddens, Paul Henry. The Early Petroleum Industry. Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1974.

   ANDREW J. WASKEY