“oh How Much There Is Of It!”

“Atouronton” is an Indian word that means, "Oh how much there is of it!" and was their descriptive term for oil. Indians skimmed it off rivers and used it for greasing aching muscles, for war paint, and sometimes to burn. Occasionally a river, like the Ohio, would catch fire from the dull, brownish-black scum, and burn for hundreds of miles, destroying nearby vegetation and forcing the Red Man to flee. George Washington knew about atouronton. He owned a "burning spring," but apparently made no use of it. Lemuel Stockton, a farmer living in Cumberland County, Kentucky, drilled for a salt well in 1829 and brought in an oil gusher. He was so disgusted by his failure that he allowed the stuff to flow into the Cumberland River, thus causing a fire on the river that spread 100 miles, to Gallatin, Tennessee.

It was not until 1859 that anybody deliberately set out to drill for atouronton—known by then as "rock oil", and on August 27 of that year Colonel Edwin L. Drake brought in the first oil well on the banks of Oil Creek, near Titusville, Pennsylvania. But, even then, there was not much demand for oil. Drake, and the others who flocked to the site to duplicate his achievement, were interested chiefly in something with which to grease axles and to burn in household lamps. Crude efforts to refine the oil were made, but the axle grease remained too thin, and the kerosene kept exploding.

The explosive nature of kerosene was caused by an objectionable element called gasoline. The scientists of those days could think of no way to eliminate this gasoline excepting to sluice it off in to dumps. The first elemental products of atouronton— which we now call crude oil, or petroleum—had a difficult time catching on. Today its products provide power for almost all engines, and it made World War II a speedy, deadly interval in civilisation progress. Petroleum's 500-odd products provided many things, from the motive power for the warships of the United Nations, to wrappings for the rations of the men on the battlefronts.

More than 294,000,000 gallons were produced and used every single day by the United Nations. George Washington, when he and General Andrew Lewis received a patent on the tract of land near the present city of Charleston, West Virginia, wrote that he took up the section "on account of a bituminous spring of so inflammable a nature as to burn so freely as spirits, and is as nearly difficult to extinguish," but that is all he ever wrote about it. Neither the Father of Our Country nor Colonel Drake could know that from crude oil would be made houses and candy bars and 100-octane aviation gasoline. It is filled with hydrogen and carbon, just as is sugar cane and an ear of corn. Until the wide use of combustion engines, however, the existence of petroleum did not have much influence upon civilisation.

By: davidbunch

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