All the (fruitful) errors of the discovery of oil
The history of oil is dotted with errors similar to those which, according to Darwin, proved fruitful by acting like grains of sand in the machinery of evolution. Excerpt from GB Zorzoli 's new book, “The fruitful errors. How a mistake can contribute to progress”
The history of oil is dotted with errors similar to those which, according to Darwin, proved fruitful by acting like grains of sand in the machinery of evolution.
Men have known the existence of oil and have used it for many centuries, because the pressure existing in the not too deep deposits managed to make part of it exude to the surface […]. However, until the second half of the 19th century, oil was not in the news, because it had not yet been invented as an energy raw material. Indeed, in the very country where this innovation was to be realized, its presence was long considered a misfortune.
During the first part of the 19th century, exceptional population growth occurred in the United States: from 9.5 million inhabitants in 1820 to over 31 million in 1860, with a rate of increase that had no equal in history. A significant contribution came from the millions of Europeans attracted by the American mirage: a migratory flow characterized by almost exponential growth, coming mainly from Ireland, Germany and the Scandinavian countries. However, the original thirteen states that made up the new American nation, all on the eastern side of the continent, were unable to absorb such a wave of arrivals. A substantial part of immigrants then decided to make their fortune by heading towards the territories further west, which in the collective imagination, in addition to becoming the legendary Wild West, would be transformed into another of the founding myths of American identity: the frontier. A myth which in the interpretation given in 1893 by Frederick Jackson Turner was based on the image of the "moving edge" of the tide of civilization advancing in the wild lands of the West, an unstable "contact zone", of meeting and clash between worlds and different cultures, in clear contrast to the one that rigidly separated the individual states in Europe.
[…] In various areas of the North American territory affected by migrations towards the west, the oil was found in not very deep deposits, sometimes even oozing onto the ground above. Since the availability of water and salt was the indispensable condition for settling in a still uncolonized area, when they came across an apparently promising area, the pioneers naturally began to drill into the ground and sometimes reached a layer of oil, causing the classic blowout. Driven by the pressure existing in the reservoir, the oil rose to the surface at a high speed. Often the jets released large quantities of a black, oily liquid, sometimes causing fires that put the lives of the unfortunate victims at risk; however polluting the area irreparably.
Certainly light years less creative than the Senecas Indians, the vision of an oily mass that set itself on fire inexplicably did not motivate any of the bystanders to reflect on its possible use. Evidently these were much cruder and more unprepared people than those who populate American films on the frontier. Cursing their bad luck and swearing like Turks, because in the most benevolent of hypotheses the only clothing they had was irremediably ruined, the pioneers hastily abandoned the land, which was no longer worth anything to them. Furthermore, the news relating to these misadventures was slow to spread, because they happened in territories very far from the settlements on the east coast, where there would be no shortage of people capable of understanding the potential of that oily liquid. Although he was unaware of it, Samuel Kier, an entrepreneur and son of Thomas and Mary Martin Kier, immigrants who owned several salt wells, did not make the mistake of despairing when, in 1840, some wells were fouled by oil. Long before Rockefeller, he turned disaster into opportunity. Inspired by the use that the Indians made of it, he began to sell the bottled oil as a medicinal ointment. To facilitate the diffusion of the product, Kier had advertising brochures printed which, like today's leaflets, extolled its properties.
In 1854 one of these sheets fell into the hands of George Bissel, an industrialist involved in the production of illuminating oils. Obviously interested in the possible use of the same substance for his business, he sent a sample to Professor Benjamin Silliman, holder of the chair of chemistry at Yale University. He made an equally non-trivial decision, given the time: realizing that he was dealing with a mixture of different chemical components, he decided to subject it to fractional distillation. The subsequent chemical analysis of the individual components allowed him to define it as a "mixture of hydrocarbons", and for some to identify its use: oils for lighting, lubricants, raw material for the production of candles.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/zorzoli-gli-errori-fecondi/ on Sat, 20 Apr 2024 07:00:42 +0000.