A Brief History of Heating Oil
Heating oil delivery truck in the 1960s (image: aplaceofsense.com)
The history of oil is a long one, involving many important discoveries and much technological innovation.
3000 BC to 17th century
Before heating oil, petroleum had many uses around the globe. The Bible refers to using pitch for building purposes—cementing walls in Babylon. It can be presumed that Moses’ basket and Noah’s ark were caulked with bitumen (the semisolid oozy substance that seeped from cracks in the earth) according to practices common at the time for waterproofing. Mesopotamians as early as 3000 BC used bitumen to make buildings, ships, medicines and roads.
Oil was also used for war. Byzantines made use of Greek fire, a mixture of petroleum and lime that set aflame upon impact with water. In the Illiad, Homer notes the use of oil by the Trojans to set ships aflame.
China dug the first oil wells, starting around the 4th century. The unearthed oil was then burned to evaporate brine and produce salt. It is thought that they also extracted oil for use in lamps and possibly even heating. By the 10th century, the Chinese had created bamboo pipelines from oil wells to salt springs. These techniques, however, took a long and circuitous route to the United States.
In America, Native Americans collected oil either by skimming it from the surface of springs or wringing out blankets soaked in oil—the bulk of this was used to make medicine.
It took need and ingenuity to extrapolate that oil could be used for much, much more.
The Industrial Revolution (Late 18th century and early 19th century)
In the early 1700’s, England was in a fuel crisis. Due to rapid industrialization, it had used up the bulk of its firewood, and had now moved on to be totally dependent on coal to fuel factories and foundries, heat homes, and cook food. With a population of 600,000, London alone used over a thousand tons of coal a day. There just wasn’t enough coming out of the ground. It was Thomas Newcomen’s invention of the heat engine that first refueled the industrial revolution. Newcomen’s invention meant that pumps could be used to drain water out of deepening coal mines, allowing for the continuation of mining efforts. It was also the first conversion of chemical energy of coal to physical energy—work, and it did so more efficiently than the horses and men it was to replace. It was Newcomen’s invention that allowed the age of coal to continue. However, in many ways, it was also what led to the need for new fuel sources. Abundant fuel led to cheap iron. Cheap iron, partnered with energy, meant more machines. Each new technological advance of the industrial revolution (engines fueling looms, lathes, presses, etc), of which there were many, meant a heavier burden on the fuel industry. This led to new demand for producers of energy, and new innovation.
Lighting Fuel
While coal provided heat to citizens of the 18th and 19th century, a cheap and safe source of artificial light was in high demand. A few more hours of light meant more productivity, and more productivity meant more money for businessmen and laborers alike. Vegetable oil and whale oil, other common light fuels of the era, weren’t cheap and the light they produced was weak.
Coal was the most common heating fuel in the US before the introduction of heating oil. (image: dep.state.pa.us)
In the mid 1800’s, a small group of investors lead by George Bissel began to look more closely at the “rock oil” that seeped from the earth. The liquid was known to be flammable, and perhaps it could be used as a cheap source of light. The investors hired a scientist from Yale, Benjamin Sillman, Jr., to analyze the substance, and it was his report that brought the possibilities of oil into perspective. It could be boiled and distilled into different fractions, all composed of carbon and hydrogen. One of these fractions—kerosene—could be used to create high quality light.
Kerosene prompted the first oil boom. The Greek Keros (wax) and elation (oil), was altered to “ene” in order to sound more like the familiar camphene oil, a popular but highly flammable light fuel of the time made from turpentine. Kerosene, when mixed correctly, was much less flammable. The technique of creating kerosene was originally invented by Dr. Abraham Gesner using coal oils—petroleum provided a new source of raw material that went into Gesner’s established process, only it was cheaper than coal. After the first kerosene lamp appeared in Vienna, the only thing keeping the fuel from widespread use was a lack of oil supply.
Kerosene lamps were common light sources in the 19th century. (image: bernsauction.com)
Digging wouldn’t work. Salt boring (developed 1,500 years earlier in China and imported to Europe in 1830) had made its way to the United States. In 1856, George Bissel had a stroke of genius for the next step in the oil enterprise when he saw an advertisement for rock oil medicine showing salt “boring”, or drilling; oil was a byproduct of commercial salt excavation. Bissel noted that if they could drill down and pump out the oil like water, they’d save the time and expense of digging. It wasn’t until 1859 in Titusville, Pennsylvania, that the technique finally proved successful.
