Quotes About Coal oil

By the 1850s, turpentine production was declining in America. A new competitor surged into the lamp oil market: coal oil, distilled from cannel coal (oil shale) or asphalt/bitumen, a heavy hydrocarbon found naturally in semisolid pools such as Pitch Lake on the Caribbean island of Trinidad and the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.

Gesner concentrated on developing a fuel for lighting. He used the pitch he had collected in Trinidad as feedstock, conducting some two thousand separate experiments. By 1846, he had successfully distilled coal oil, as it was commonly called, from this bitumen.