PETROL

Manawatu Times, Volume LII, Issue 3615, 16 September 1927, Page 10

PETROL

Although most people describe the spirit used in internal combustion engines as “petrol” the word "petrol” is really a trade name adopted for the spirit distilled from petroleum by one particular firm many years ago. Petrol is really benzine, or, as it is known in America, gasolene. The manufacture of illuminating and lubricating oils from petroleum is a development of the past century, although crude petroleum oil has been known for thousands of years. It is related that on one occasion the great Macedonian King, Alexander the Great, was entertained by illuminating a city street in Persia by means of a train of petroleum laid on the ground and ignited by means of a torch: in its asphaltic form it was •employed as mortar for the bricks in the building of Babylon,, and also by Greek and Roman architects. Crude petroleum has been burnt in India for more than 1,000 years.

About seventy-five, years ago the sale of petroleum products was practically confined to a few experimental medicinal preparations. A little later in the nineteenth century, however, the manufacture of illuminating and lubricating oils commmenccd and rapidly increased, although the lightest of all the distillates, now known as petrol, was f,or a long time regarded merely as a waste product. The advent of the internal combustion engine soon discovered a use for it, and to-day there is an ever-increas-ing world-wide demand for this spirit of which the consumption in motor cars alone runs Into hundreds of millions of gallons a year. The first well actually to be drilled to obtain petrol was sunk at Oil Creek, West Pennsylvania, in 1559, by a Colonel Brakes and from' then until 1575 tills field was the only one In the United States. Drake however, did not profit from his venture and died in poverty, his fate being shared by othe r pioneers in the persons of Van Syekel, who originated the pipe line succossf'i.ly for conveying petroleum products; Merrill, a chemist, who was the first successful refiner; and Shaw, a Canadian. The word petrol was origin, ated by Mr P. R. Simms.