![]() In the 1840s, scientists in Britain began producing an illuminant from the distillation of coal. This demand fueled the search for new sources of light. But demand intensified-and prices skyrocketed-with the development of mechanized transportation and industrialization. It also burned, but was unappealing as a lamp oil due to its unpleasant odor and smoke.Ĭandles and whale oil provided most of the artificial light in the decades before the Civil War. Europeans called the dark, gooey substance Seneca Oil and found it effective for treating sprains and rheumatism. This is true in northwestern Pennsylvania, where the Seneca tribe, part of the Iroquois nation, collected seep oil for hundreds of years, using it as a salve, insect repellent, and tonic. Later, knowledge of oil and its uses declined the Romans, for example, regarded petroleum as a curiosity only.īut the knowledge never fully disappeared since oil seeps to the surface in many parts of the world. Oil was used more than five thousand years ago in Mesopotamia bitumen was mined by the Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, who used it in architecture, building roads, caulking ships, and medicines. While the drilling of oil - which marks the start of the modern petroleum industry - dates only to the middle of the 19 th century, the knowledge of oil is very old. Landmark Designation and Acknowledgments. ![]() Development of the Pennsylvania Oil Industry.Colonel Edwin Drake and the First Oil Well.The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company is Founded.Samuel Kier Experiments with Pennsylvania Oil. ![]() In the middle of the 19 th century two developments occurred that guaranteed Pennsylvania’s dominance: The construction, in Pittsburgh, of the first still to refine crude oil into kerosene for use in lighting, and the drilling of the first oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Long before Texas gushers and offshore drilling, and a century before oil wells dotted Arabian sands and rose out of Venezuelan waters, the center of petroleum production was western Pennsylvania. Steel Tower in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and August 27, 2009, at the Drake Well Museum in Titusville, Pennsylvania, during the 150 th anniversary of the discovery of oil by Edwin Drake.
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