( I’m not sure I got the right flair for this please correct me if it’s wrong )
This question is more focused on Modern history (which might be pretty broad depending on your definition so let’s just say 19th/20th century
Another question that I kinda wanna ask is similar to this one that being what is the first use of oil as a vehicle fuel
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How detailed do you want to get? Because there is Google but then you came to read it so do you wanna hear an unbiassed opinion or do you wanna hear a slightly biased opinion that favours us as Americans as a good guys
Use of oil in a broad sense as fuel is ancient. Stone oil lamps date to the stone age, and oil lamps of some form have been used by nearly all human populations at one time or another. Most were powered by animal fat (like seal blubber used by Inuit to heat their homes), but plant oils (particularly from nuts and seeds) were sometimes used too.
If you mean petroleum, that’s more recent. The Persian Empire used it for heating and lighting; it’s mentioned in fourth-century-BC tablets from Persepolis (the capital). It’s been used in vehicles about as long as we’ve *had* powered vehicles.
The first internal combustion engine was built in 50 years earlier 1798, but without any real oil industry it didn’t take off, especially since coal was being widely mined and used.
Non-petroluem oils like plant oils have been burnt for fuel for thousands of years. Petroleum has also been used, for various things, for thousands of years, but its naturally more of a thick tar. It was first refined as a fuel for lamps in the mid 1800s, initially in America and then worldwide.
Gas engines started to be explored for real around this time, once there was a lot of oil already being pumped and refined in many countries. By 1886 one Karl Benz made and sold the first commercial gas engine, powering a 3-wheeled contraption. You might recognize his name, his company still exists today. Rudof Diesel invented the diesel engine in 1896, and the Ford Model T made cars a widespread machine (instead of a rich person’s toy) starting in 1908.
Well, humans have known for a long time that oil burns.
When we started messing around with engines (steam engine, combustion engine, etc) we needed fuels to burn to create enough heat to make the engines work. For steam engines, it would be coal — like a steam train. Eventually after a lot of experimenting and innovation, we discovered that we could refine oil in a way to use it to run internal combustion engines. Over time, our refining/processing got better and the engines got more efficient as we continued designing them.
The modern oil industry began in western Pennsylvania. Pennzoil, Getty oil, Penn state motor oil? Smart guy figured out how to drill for oil and it became possible to extract large quantities of fuel from underground. It’s kind of a long story. The internal combustion engine had not been invented yet btw.
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