When the steam engine was invented at the beginning of the 18th
century, most sources of fuel worldwide were the same as they had been for
centuries: wood for cooking, oil for lighting, coal for heating and industry.
The advent of commercially successful steam power in 1712 allowed for machinery
and engines that were larger and more capable than any machines had ever been, catalyzing the dramatic
changes of the Industrial Revolution. During the 19th century, continuous improvements
to steam engine design transformed factories and built railroads across Europe and
the Americas. Both inventors and engineers knew, however, that steam power had
significant limitations. Steam must be generated by burning fuel, usually coal:
and steam engines were large and bulky to allow for a furnace. The first steam-powered
locomotive, invented in 1804 by the English engineer Richard Trevethick, was so
heavy it broke the rails it rode on. From the earliest days of the Industrial
Revolution, engineers looked for alternatives to steam that would allow for
lighter, more powerful engines.
Internal combustion provided one such alternative. For
centuries, inventors had imagined and tinkered with internal combustion
engines; the medieval Arab scholar Al-Jazari
described twin-cylinder reciprocating pistons in 1206, and Leonardo
da Vinci sketched
compressionless engines in 1509. The modem combustion engine was the British inventor
Robert Street's 1794 model, which used exploding gas to drive the pistons.
Finding reliable fuel in the 18th and 19th centuries was a problem. Inventors experimented with a variety of fuels including kerosene, wood, coal, natural gas, and crude petroleum. Petroleum-powered engines have since become the worldwide norm. Literally meaning 'rock oil," petroleum seeps out of porous rock. Until 1857, when the first commercial oil well was drilled in Ploiesti, Romania, nearly all petroleum came from oil-saturated sand deposits called oil sands or from surface level oil seeps. Petroleum had been known to ancient people in Asia and the Middle East, though its use as an effective engine fuel awaited 19th-century advances in chemistry. Crude petroleum burns, but not very efficiently; it must be refined and distilled to become one of several usable fuel grades, e.g. kerosene, diesel, gasoline, or jet fuel.
The birth of internal combustion engines did not mean the
immediate death of coal or steam power. During this period, coal remained cheap and
plentiful and continued to be used to drive large steam engines. Factories and
large industrial machinery continued to use coal as the main source of fuel,
and coal remains the world's most-used fuel today.
(The New York Times ‘Smarter
by Sunday – 52 Weekends of Essential Knowledge for the Curious Mind’)
