PETROLEUM
The rise in
importance was due to the invention of the internal combustion engine, the rise in
commercial aviation, and the importance of petroleum to industrial organic chemistry,
particularly the synthesis of plastics, fertilizers, solvents, adhesives and pesticides.
More than 4000 years ago, according to Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, asphalt was
used in the construction of the walls and towers of Babylon; there were oil pits near
Ardericca (near Babylon), and a pitch spring on Zacynthus. Great quantities of it were
found on the banks of the river Issus, one of the tributaries of the Euphrates. Ancient
Persian tablets indicate the medicinal and lighting uses of petroleum in the upper levels
of their society. By 347 AD, oil was produced from bamboo-drilled wells in China.
In the 1840s, the process to distill kerosene from petroleum was invented by James
Young in Scotland and the first refinery was built by Ignacy Łukasiewicz, providing a
cheaper alternative to whale oil
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