Editing Kerosene (section)

===Kerosene from petroleum===
In 1851, [[Samuel Martin Kier]] began selling lamp oil to local miners, under the name "Carbon Oil". He distilled this from [[crude oil]] by a process of his own invention. He also invented a new lamp to burn his product.<ref Name="Pioneer" >{{Cite book
| title =Greater Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, Past, Present, Future; The Pioneer Oil Refiner
| publisher =The American Manufacturer and Iron World
| year=1901
| url =https://books.google.com/books?id=lkcVAAAAYAAJ&q=refinery+kier+pittsburgh&pg=PT57
| author1 =World, American Manufacturer and Iron
}}</ref> He has been dubbed the ''Grandfather of the American Oil Industry'' by historians.<ref Name="McInnis" >{{cite web
| last = McInnis
| first = Karen
| title = Kier, Samuel Martin- Bio
| work = biography
| publisher = The Pennsylvania State University
| url = http://www.pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/bios/Kier__Samuel_Martin.html
| access-date = 12 December 2008
| archive-date = 13 June 2010
| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100613130838/http://www.pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/bios/Kier__Samuel_Martin.html

}}</ref> Kier's [[salt well]]s began to be fouled with [[petroleum]] in the 1840s. At first, Kier simply dumped the oil into the nearby [[Pennsylvania Main Line Canal]] as useless waste, but later he began experimenting with several distillates of the crude oil, along with a chemist from eastern Pennsylvania.<ref Name="Harper">{{Cite journal
 |last        = Harper
 |first       = J. A.
 |title       = Samuel Kier&nbsp;– Medicine Man & Refiner
 |format      = Excerpt from Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Unrefined Complex Liquid Hydrocarbons
 |journal     = Pennsylvania Geology
 |volume      = 26
 |issue       = 1
 |publisher   = Oil Region Alliance of Business, Industry & Tourism
 |year        = 1995
 |url         = http://www.oil150.com/essays/2007/02/samual-kier
 |access-date  = 12 December 2008
 
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20120315221502/http://www.oil150.com/essays/2007/02/samual-kier
 |archive-date = 15 March 2012
 }}</ref>

[[Ignacy Łukasiewicz]], a [[Poland|Polish]] pharmacist residing in [[Lviv]], and his partner {{interlanguage link|Jan Zeh|pl}} had been experimenting with different distillation techniques, trying to improve on Gesner's kerosene process, but using [[petroleum|oil]] from a local [[petroleum seep]]. Many people knew of his work, but paid little attention to it. On the night of 31 July 1853, doctors at the local hospital needed to perform an emergency operation, virtually impossible by candlelight. They therefore sent a messenger for Łukasiewicz and his new lamps. The lamp burned so brightly and cleanly that the hospital officials ordered several lamps plus a large supply of fuel. Łukasiewicz realized the potential of his work and quit the pharmacy to find a business partner, and then traveled to [[Vienna]] to register his technique with the government. Łukasiewicz moved to the [[Gorlice]] region of Poland in 1854, and sank several wells across southern Poland over the following decade, setting up a refinery near [[Jasło]] in 1859.<ref>{{Cite book
| last1 = Steil  |first1 = Tim
| last2 = Luning  |first2=Jim
| title = Fantastic Filling Stations
| publisher = MBI Publishing
| year= 2002
| pages = 19–20
| isbn = 978-0-7603-1064-9
}}</ref>

The petroleum discovery by [[Edwin Drake]] {{ndash}} [[Drake Well]] {{ndash}} in western Pennsylvania in 1859 caused a great deal of public excitement and investment drilling in new wells, not only in Pennsylvania, but also in Canada, where petroleum had been discovered at [[Oil Springs, Ontario]] in 1858, and southern Poland, where Ignacy Łukasiewicz had been distilling lamp oil from petroleum seeps since 1852. The increased supply of petroleum allowed oil refiners to entirely side-step the oil-from-coal patents of both Young and Gesner, and produce illuminating oil from petroleum without paying royalties to anyone. As a result, the illuminating oil industry in the United States completely switched over to petroleum in the 1860s. The petroleum-based illuminating oil was widely sold as Kerosene, and the trade name soon lost its proprietary status, and became the lower-case generic product "kerosene".<ref>{{cite book|author=Paul Lucier|title=Scientists and Swindlers: Consulting on Coal and Oil in America, 1820–1890|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fNsKrN56RKEC&pg=PA161|year=2008|publisher=JHU Press|location=Baltimore|isbn=978-1-4214-0285-7|pages=232–233}}</ref> Because Gesner's original Kerosene had been also known as "coal oil", generic kerosene from petroleum was commonly called "coal oil" in some parts of the United States well into the 20th century.

In the United Kingdom, manufacturing oil from coal (or oil shale) continued into the early 20th century, although increasingly overshadowed by petroleum oils.

As kerosene production increased, whaling declined. The [[Whaling in the United States|American whaling fleet]], which had been steadily growing for 50 years, reached its all-time peak of 199 ships in 1858. By 1860, just two years later, the fleet had dropped to 167 ships. The Civil War cut into American whaling temporarily, but only 105 whaling ships returned to sea in 1866, the first full year of peace, and that number dwindled until only 39 American ships set out to hunt whales in 1876.<ref>United States Bureau of the Census, 1960, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957, p.445.</ref> Kerosene, made first from coal and oil shale, then from petroleum, had largely taken over whaling's lucrative market in lamp oil.

Electric lighting started displacing kerosene as an illuminant in the late 19th century, especially in urban areas. However, kerosene remained the predominant commercial end-use for petroleum refined in the United States until 1909, when it was exceeded by motor fuels. The rise of the gasoline-powered automobile in the early 20th century created a demand for the lighter hydrocarbon fractions, and refiners invented methods to increase their output of gasoline, while decreasing their output of kerosene. In addition, some of the heavier hydrocarbons that previously went into kerosene were incorporated into diesel fuel. Kerosene kept some market share by being increasingly used in stoves and portable heaters.<ref>[[Harold F. Williamson]] and others, ''The American Petroleum Industry: the Age of Energy, 1899–1959'' (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1963) 170, 172, 194, 204.</ref>