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Twilight of the Age of Steam, Part 2: Petroleum and After
In the mid-nineteenth century, a new industry emerged, based on the refining of petroleum. The human use of petroleum is ancient, and may (for all we know) date well into pre-history. In the form f…
This mechanical process was too slow for the speeds Daimler and Maybach wanted, so their Standuhr engine (so-called because it resembled an upright pendulum clock) instead used a hot tube of metal that protruded into cylinder for ignition. This created a huge imbalance in supply and demand between southern producers, “flaring or simply venting into the atmosphere hundreds of millions of cubic feet per day of natural gas” and northern cities eager for a clean, cheap source of heat. : Henry Ford, George Selden, and the Race to Invent the Auto Age(New York: Ballantine Books 2016), 59-64; Cummins, Internal Fire, 230-236; Paul Daimler, “The Development of the Petroleum Automobile,” Engineering Magazine 22, 3 (December 1901), 358-360.
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