The Sun.
London, England, 1865-03-16 00:00:00

Paraffin and Paraffin Oils.

At the meeting on Monday of the Royal Scottish Society
of Arts, Mr. James Young, of Limefield, read the follow-
ing paper " On Paraffin and Paraffin Oils"::—The earliest
notice that I know of hydro-carbon is the divine command
to Noah—" Thou shalt pitch it within and without with
pitch ;" and again, when the impious inhabitants of the
plain said—" Go to, let us build a city and a tower whose
top may reach into heaven, they had brick for stone, and
slime had they for mortar." In the same locality, at this
day, old buildings can be seen, the bricks of which are
cemented together with this same slime or pitch ; and boats
are still made of basketwork, the interstices of which are
filled with the same material. In several places in the
Bible the word translated " salt" is by many held to
mean petroleum, so that this substance seems to have
been in constant use from the earliest dawn of history.
There are exported at the present time from the sea-
port of Baku, on the Caspian, 4,000 tons of petroleum
annually. The roofs of the houses in Baku are covered
with this substance, which makes them water-tight. In
this neighbourhood there is a large tract of land through
which petroleum and inflammable gas rise in great
quantities. Ussher, who was there in his journey from
London to Persepolis, describes and gives a picture of a
fire-temple, and actually saw devotees, who had come
a long distance, worshipping this not celestial fire; and

stranger still, he found in the same place a part y of

Germans building a work to distil and manufacture this
petroleum. This is one way of invading the realms of hea-
then superstition—making a substance that has received
divine rites for thousands of years the object of a joint-
stock company " limited" to spread it over the world to
give physical light, which is, to say the least of it, no hin-
drance to spiritual light. A district in Burmah has supplied
petroleum from before historical times. Symes, in his
" Embassy to Ava," vol. ii., states that the number of wells
in that country exceeds 520, and the annual yield of petro-
leum more than 400,000 hilds. In America, small quanti-
ties of petroleum were to be found in the drug shops, under
the name of Seneca oil. It derived its name from baying
been derived or brought from the Seneca Indians, who col-

lected it on the shores of Seneca Lake. A stream in Alle-
ghany was called Oil Creek, in consequence of the appear-
ance of oil on its banks, and the same name was given to
another branch of the Alleghany in Vanango county,
Pennsylvania; and in old American maps severals places
are mentioned in this part of the country as produc-
ing oil. Upon Oil Creek, in Vanango county, two spots
wore particularly noticed. At these places springs
issued from the banks of the stream, bringing
up more or less oil, which collected upon the surface of
the water as it stood in pools below the springs. It was
collected by spreading woollen cloths upon the water,
and wringing them when saturated. In the valley
there are numerous ancient pits, which seem to have
been excavated for the purpose of extracting oil, but by
whom made is unknown. It is supposed by some that these
pits were made by the French who occupied the country in
the early part of last century ; but others believe that the
Indians dug the pits. ,Day, in his history of Pennsylvania,
gives an account of the high value in which the Indians
hold this substance. They mixed it with the paint used to
anoint themselves for war, and employed it in their reli-
gious rites. He queies a letter from the commander of Fort
Duguesne to General Montcalm, describing an assembly of
Indians by night on the banks of the creek, and in the
midst of their ceremonies, their setting fire to the scum of
oil that collected on the surface of the water. As the flames
burst forth, illuminating the darkfralley, there arose from
the Indians a loud triumphant shout, which made the hills
re-echo. The scene recalled to the writer the accounts of
the ceremony of the fire-worshippers. The quantities of oil
collected by the early ,settlers were small; the largess
amount which was from the lowest spring on Oil Creek
reaching sometimes to 20 barrels a year. I quote from the
New American Encyclopedia—" No suspicion seems to
have been entertained that the supplies could be increased
by sinking wells through the sandstones and shales that
underlie the valley, and it was not known that by distilla-
tion and chemical treatment the'quality of petroleum could
be greatly improved. This was the state of matters with
regard to petroleum up to the year 1847. During the last
" two centuries, several attempts were made to make tar or
pitch from coal, with the intention of using it for the pur-
pose that Norwegian or Archangel tar is used, such as tar-
ring ships and ropes." Some of these are very curious and
well worth looking into as interesting matters of history,
but your time will not allow this to-night. The only one
of these attempts that assumed the position of a manufac-
ture was that of Lord Dundonald, who subjected coal to
distillation, producing coke and tar. This manufacture ap-
pears to have succeeded till some time after the introduc-
tion of gas lighting, when the tar from the gasworks was
thrown upon the market in considerable quantities, and ex-
tinguished the works first erected by Lord Dundonald.
During the present century several efforts were made in
England and France to produce useful products from the
shales in Dorsetshire in England, and Autun in France.
About the year 1830, Dr. Reichenbach made an elaborate
investigation of the products obtained by distilling wood,
and among these substances discovered a white waxy sub-
stance having little affinity for other bodies, which he named
paraffine ; and about the same time Dr. Christisen, in mak-
ing a chemical examination in Rangoon petroleum, disco-
vered a body which he named petroline. It was soon found
that Dr. Reichenbach's paraffin and Dr.: hristisen's
petroline were the same substance. Reichenbach, who
was a manufacturing chemist on a very large scale,
although ;he produced very small quantities of paraffine,
saw clearly and boldly stated that if the substance could
be obtained in quantities it would be of great use, and
mentioned candles as ono of the uses to which it might be
applied. The substance was analysed by Gay Lussac, who
determined its composition, showing that it was a hydro-
carbon composed of equal atoms of carbon and hydrogen,
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investigation.r e
Dec., 1847, I received a letter from Dr. Lyon Playfair, and
as this is the starting point of a very large and interesting
branch of commerce, 1 shall, with your leave, read this let-
ter. On examining the coal mine mentioned in Dr. Play-
fair's letter, I found that the petroleum came from a sand-
stone bed which lay above the seam of coal. This petro-
leum was a dark coloured substance, nearly black, about
the consistence of olive oil. I had a small work erected, and
petroleum was manufactured into two oils; the lighter was
sold for burning in lamps, and the heavier for lubricating
machinery. The quantity of petroleum from the mine gra-
dually diminished, and that petroleum work came to an
end; but it had served a useful purpose—it had proved that
petroleum could be turned to good account. It was soon
followed by works of the same kind. In 1854 or 1855, a
quantity of Burmah petroleum was brought to this coun-
try, and works erected near Liverpool for its purification
by the same process as I had used with the Derbyshire
petroleum. A large work was also built in London, and
a very large business done with this Burmah, or, as it
was named, Rangoon petroleum. But it is in America
that the trade has been developed with a rapidity
characteristic of our energetic cousins. In 1854, Messrs.
Evelett and Bissel, of New York, secured the right of the
upper spring in Oil Creek, and organised a company in New
York. The quality of the oil was tested, and a report made
upon it by Professor Silliman, jun. No progress, however,
was made in establishing the business till 1857, when
Messrs. Cowditch and Drake, of Now Haven, undertook the
search for the oil. Col. C. L. Drake removed to Titusvlle,
on Oil Creek, and the winter of 1858-9 completedh
of isitahre-
rangement for boring to the !rock below the bed
creek. not
The works advanced very slowly, and it was
till Aug. 26, 1859, that oil was struck at depthtthheeroe, k and
d7tlhfte.
The drill suddenly sank into a cavity of
ollupnumtingp t being
4000
introduced, a supply of oil w.
oil rose within bin. of the suiticoeb;
the
taianndeda small
Then a steam engine was
was increased to 1,000 a-day. T
gallons a day, and a larger pump being introduced, flow
applied to the work, and kept in constant operation ; still
the supply was uninterrupted for weeks. This success
brought on the oil-fever, which has raged with greater or
less interest over a large part of America ever since. I may
mention that I visited the district a few months after the
discovery. Tho only business talked of or thing thought
of was boring for oil. In whichever way you looked you
saw nothing but derricks and boring machines. I
may state that small steam engines were universally
used for boring; whereas in this country, where there
has been so long and so much boring for minerals, we are
only beginning to make use of the steam-engine for that
purpose now. A gentleman whom I met assured me he
had ceuuted =dully the number of bores being put down)