In the first years of the Automotive Age, a variety of power sources were used to propel the more than 200 nameplates, most of which quickly faded away. Electric cars were quite popular but took a long time to charge the batteries and they had to be renewed often.  Steam-driven cars were also available, the most famous made by the Stanley Brothers between 1897 and 1925. 

By the 1820s, the Age of Steam ushered in the Industrial Revolution. In time, steam power would be replaced with the internal combustion engine powered by gasoline. It was a highly complex technology first perfected by Dr. Otto in Germany. By the 1880s, 20,000 Otto Engines were in use. In 1886, Carl Benz fitted one on a three-wheeler and the automobile was born. Another German, Rudolf Diesel, invented another oil-fired engine that still bears his name. 

Both engines were eventually fitted on boats, ships, cars and with the advent of the airplane it took humankind aloft. The three-pointed Mercedes Benz symbol, the star, points in three directions: “On Land, On Water and in the Air.” The age of the internal combustion engine was now under way and with it the oil industry to power it. In 1925, there were 17.5 million cars on our roads; by 1945, 26 million; by 1975, 108 million; and today, more than 135 million in a nation of 300 million.

The Age of Oil was born when E. L. Drake drilled a well and hit oil at 33 feet below the surface. It gushed to the surface Aug. 28, 1859. The ability to extract oil from drilled wells evolved rapidly as audiences have come to understand in the movie There Will Be Blood. By the 1880s, oil rigs dotted the landscape of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and, to a lesser extent, California. By the 1920s, the fields of Texas produced most of our needs and one field in western Texas supplied most of our military requirements in World War II.

But the quarter of a billion barrels produced from 1859 to 1884 were not used to fuel the piston-driven cars. This still was in the future. Oil had many other uses and its evolution kept pace with the rise of the chemical industry. 

By the First World War, gasoline and diesel fuel drove the engines of the world. The great navies abandoned coal for oil and tanker farms and oilers fueled them. In the new age of industrialized warfare, securing oil reserves helped determine the outcome of many conflicts. Hitler’s grand design for victory was to seize the oil fields of the Middle East after taking North Africa while another army raced toward the Russian fields around Baku. Japan’s rampage through Asia was in part driven by its need for resources, especially oil to fuel its immense military and naval machine.

Today, a non-military race is on to fuel the world’s inappeasable appetite for oil; we have come a long way from the days when Texas could supply nearly all of our needs.

More than any other invention, the gas and diesel engines transformed the world. Not until an inexpensive and efficient replacement is invented and developed will the world will be dependent on petroleum. Hybrids and electric engines will serve our short-term needs but for the foreseeable future, oil will be king. Even at very high prices per barrel, far too much has been invested in the Petroleum Age in terms of automobile production, oil drilling and refineries to make an immediate reversal. In time, another Dr. Otto or Rudolf  Diesel will emerge to solve the problem. On the 200^th anniversary of Drake’s Well, perhaps the Petroleum Age will join the Steam Age. The incentive will be the rise of the levels of the oceans and the transformation of the environment, not a total depreciation of oil reserves. In the 1880s, early oil geologists predicted that oil was one of the most plentiful resources and new finds off the coast of Cuba, in Russia, and in the northern reaches of the Japanese islands close to Russia affirm this estimate.  In a word, oil will be king well into the future. But history has many ironies. We just may come full circle to the first years of the Automotive Age. A modernized version of the Stanley Steamer and the electric car may someday replace the combustion engine-driven cars and cruise silently down our highways.

-- Sander A. Diamond, professor of history