Technology
-
WAX and ASPHALT CRUDE OILS
Petroleum crude is infinitely complex and varied. The character of crude oil depends on where it is found. Crude oil found in Pennsylvania and nearby West Virginia and Southeastern Ohio is a paraffinic crude oil, or commonly termed wax-based.
-
SAMUEL KIER (1813-1874) – GIVING OIL COMMERCIAL VALUE
Samuel Kier was the first to give crude petroleum a sustained market value when in 1848 he packaged pure crude oil from Tarentum area salt wells in half-pint bottles for sale as a medicine. A half-pint bottle of Kier's Petroleum, or Kier's Rock Oil, sold for 50 cents.
-
PENNSYLVANIA OIL INDUSTRY AND EARLY AVIATION
Oil “fueled” the development of aviation. This fact was noted by Daniel Yergin in The Prize (1991). “When the Wright Brothers airplane first flew into the air at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903, its engine burned gasoline and lubricants that had been brought to the beach in wooden barrels and blue tin cans by salesman from Standard Oil.”
-
Three Fabulous Decades
The decades from 1900 to 1930 were the period of accelerated development for the petroleum industry. Accelerated development is when improvements multiply, prices are reduced, new markets are tapped, and the industry swiftly expands.
-
Nitroglycerine Saved Many Wells
Less than a year after the first oil well was drilled in northwestern Pennsylvania, well owners had trouble. Paraffin was the culprit. Petroleum in this region is rich in the waxy substance and it was clogging the underground flow of oil. The producers were an ingenious lot and they quickly set out to find a solution.
-
Kerosense - Gasoline
For fifty-five years, 1859 – 1914, kerosene in terms of volume manufactured as well as total value was the leading refined product of the American petroleum industry. Throughout the last four decades of the nineteenth century, kerosene was used by both the American consumer and those in Europe as an illuminant in lamps. American refiners actually exported more of their kerosene to Europe than what was consumed at home. In this country, kerosene competed with manufactured gas and, where available, natural gas as a source of light in nineteenth century homes.