Laura Fisher, age 15, of Austin, Texas, for her question:
WHEN WAS PETROLEUM FIRST USED?
Petroleum that seeped to the earth's surface from underground locations has been used since ancient times. Early Egyptians used a natural asphalt to coat mummies and in 600 B.C., King Nebuchadnessar used natural asphalt to build the walls and pave the streets of Babylon.
The ancient Asyrians and the Persians also used asphalt to build their cities. Boatmen on the Euphrates River made vessels of woven reeds smeared with asphalt.
American Indians used petroleum hundreds of years before the white man arrived. Toltec Indians of Mexico set mosaic tiles with bitumen.
Remains of ancient oil wells have been found in the oil regions of Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Ohio. We aren't sure when early inhabitants dug these wells, but the trees growing over them are hundreds of years old.
Jesuit missionaries in North America found Indians scooping up oil from surface pools in the early 1600s. The Indians used the oil for fuel and medicine.
By 1750, many oil seepages had been found in New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia which was then a part of Virginia. Wells drilled for salt often produced oil as well.
Salt makers generally regarded oil as a nuisance that interfered with salt production. But some white men borrowed the Indian custom of using oils as medicines. About 1847, Samuel Kier of Pittsburgh started bottling petroleum for medicine as a sideline to his salt business.
Frontiersman Kit Carson collected oil from a seepage in Wyoming and sold it to pioneers as axle grease for their wagons.
In 1852, a Canadian geologist by the name of Abraham Gesner discovered kerosene, commonly called coal oil. It came into wide use for lighting lamps. Some kerosene was distilled from coal and some came from petroleum.
Romania may have had the first oil industry, historians tell us. About 2,000 barrels of oil were produced in that nation in 1857. Buckets were used to bring oil up from hand dug wells.
Also in 1857, a Canadian named James Miller Williams dug an oil well and established a refinery near present day Oil Springs, Ontario. He distilled and sold oil for lamps.
But most historians trace the start of the industry on a large scale to 1859 when Edwin Drake drilled his famous well near Titusville, Pennsylvania. He used a wooden rig and a steam operated drill similar to the cable tool drills of today. When water and cave ins threatened the well, Drake drove an iron pipe into the ground to serve as a casing.
Drake struck oil at a depth of 69 1/2 feet. The oil rose to just below the surface and Drake put a pump on the well, which produced about 35 barrels a day. Oil sold for $20 a barrel.
Other men drilled wells nearby after Drake showed them how to do it. As a result, the price of oil dropped to 10 cents a barrel in less than three years.
By the early 1860s, the Pennsylvania hills flowed with oil as thousands of wells were drilled.