The History of Technology: Petroleum.

The economic potential for the internal-combustion engine lay in the need for a light locomotive engine. This could not be provided by the gas engine, depending on a piped supply of town gas, any more than by the steam engine, with its need for a cumbersome boiler; but, by using alternative fuels derived from oil, the internal-combustion engine took to wheels, with momentous consequences. Bituminous deposits had been known in Southwest Asia from antiquity and had been worked for building material, illuminants, and medicinal products. The westward expansion of settlement in America, with many homesteads beyond the range of city gas supplies, promoted the exploitation of the easily available sources of crude oil for the manufacture of kerosene (paraffin). In 1859 the oil industry took on new significance when Edwin L. Drake bored successfully through 69 feet (21 metres) of rock to strike oil in Pennsylvania, thus inaugurating the search for and exploitation of the deep oil resources of the world. While world supplies of oil expanded dramatically, the main demand was at first for the kerosene, the middle fraction distilled from the raw material, which was used as the fuel in oil lamps. The most volatile fraction of the oil, gasoline, remained na embarrassing waste product until it was discovered that this could be burned in a light internal-combustion engine; the result was an ideal prime mover for vehicles. The way was prepared for this development by the success of oil engines burning cruder fractions of oil. Kerosene-burning oil engines, modeled closely on existing gas engines, had emerged in the 1870s, and by the late 1880s engines using the vapour of heavy oil in a jet of compressed air and working on the Otto cycle had become an attractive proposition for light duties in places too isolated to use town gas.

The greatest refinements in the heavy-oil engine are associated with the work of Rudolf Diesel of Germany, who took out his first patents in 1892. Working from thermodynamic principles of minimizing heat losses, Diesel devised an engine in which the very high compression of the air in the cylinder secured the spontaneous ignition of the oil when it was injected in a carefully determined quantity. This ensured high thermal efficiency, but it also made necessary a heavy structure because of the high compression maintained, and also a rather rough performance at low speeds compared with other oil engines. It was therefore not immediately suitable for locomotive purposes, but Diesel went on improving his engine and in the 20th century it became an important form of vehicular propulsion.

Meantime the light high-speed gasoline (petrol) engine predominated. The first applications of the new engine to locomotion were made in Germany, where Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz equipped the first motorcycle and the first motorcar respectively with engines of their own design in 1885. Benz's "horseless carriage" became the prototype of the modern automobile, the development and consequences of which can be more conveniently considered in relation to the revolution in transport.

By the end of the 19th century, the internal-combustion engine was challenging the steam engine in many industrial and transport applications.

It is notable that, whereas the pioneers of the steam engine had been almost all Britons, most of the innovators in internal combustion were continental Europeans and Americans. The transition, indeed, reflects the general change in international leadership in the Industrial Revolution, with Britain being gradually displaced from its position of unchallenged superiority in industrialization and technological innovation. A similartransition occurred in the theoretical understanding of heat engines: it was the work of the Frenchman Sadi Carnot and other scientific investigators that led to the new science of thermodynamics, rather than that of the British engineers who had most practical experience of the engines on which the science was based.

It should not be concluded, however, that British innovation in prime movers was confined to the steam engine, or even that steam and internal combustion represent the only significant developments in this field during the Industrial Revolution. Rather, the success of these machines stimulated speculation about alternative sources of power, and in at least one case achieved a success the full consequences of which were not completely developed. This was the hot-air engine, for which a Scotsman, Robert Stirling, took out a patent in 1816. The hot-air engine depends for its power on the expansion and displacement of air inside a cylinder, heated by the external and continuous combustion of the fuel. Even before the exposition of the laws of thermodynamics, Stirling had devised a cycle of heat transfer that was ingenious and economical. Various constructional problems limited the size of hot-air engines to very small units, so that although they were widely used for driving fans and similar light duties before the availability of the electric motor, they did not assume great technological significance. But the economy and comparative cleanness of the hot-air engine were making it once more the subject of intensive research in the early 1970s.

The transformation of power technology in the Industrial Revolution had repercussions throughout industry and society. In the first place, the demand for fuel stimulated the coal industry, which had already grown rapidly by the beginning of the 18th century, into continuing expansion and innovation. The steam engine, which enormously increased the need for coal, contributed significantly toward obtaining it by providing more efficient mine pumps and, eventually, improved ventilating equipment. Other inventions such as that of the miners' safety lamp helped to improve working conditions, although the immediate consequence of its introduction in 1816 was to persuade mineowners to work dangerous seams, which had thitherto been regarded as inaccessible. The principle of the lamp was that the flame from the wick of an oil lamp was enclosed within a cylinder of wire gauze, through which insufficient heat passed to ignite the explosive gas (firedamp) outside. It was subsequently improved, but remained a vital source of light in coal mines until the advent of electric battery lamps. With these improvements, together with the simultaneous revolution in the transport system, British coal production increased steadily throughout the 19th century. The other important fuel for the new prime movers was petroleum, and the rapid expansion of its production has already been mentioned. In the hands of John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil organization it grew into a vast undertaking in the United States after the end of the Civil War, but the oil-extraction industry was not so well organized elsewhere until the 20th century.

Source: Britannica Online