History

Like coal, crude oil has been known since antiquity. There were many locations where oil seeps, pools and tar ponds indicated its subterranean presence but its only documented use was for heating the (late) Roman baths in Asia minor. Modern extraction of crude oil was stimulated by the search for a cheaper illuminant to replace the expensive, and increasingly scarce, oil rendered from the blubber of sperm whales, a perilous pursuit that was immortalised in Herman Melville's (1819-1891) master-piece, Moby Dick. Kerosene, a colorless and highly flammable liquid that separates from crude oil between 150-275 Celsius, fitted these requirements(today processed, and cleaner, kerosene is the principal aviation fuel), and helped to prevent the total extinction of one of the world's most massive mammalian species.

The beginnings of the crude oil industry are well documented, starting with the famous first American oil well, completed by Colonel Edwin Drake at oil Creek in Pennsylvania on August 27, 1859. Drake employed, as did generations of petroleum explorers after him, the ancient Chinese method of percussion drilling (introduced during the Han dynasty) where heavy iron bits attached to derricks by long cables(in China made of Bamboo,in the US manila) were raised( in China by men jumping up and down on levers, in the US by steam engines) and then let fall into a well to shatter the rock. In 1835, China's deepest well completed by percussion drills reached 1 km.

Notes on Energy by Vaclav Smil.