The Michigan Geological Basin: Cradle of the Global Oil Industry
Williams, Drake, and others like them filled an important need in the mid 19th century. The world was beginning its love affair with "rock oil", As industrialization progressed, inventors found new uses for the stuff beyond its traditional inclusion in patent medicine (which didn't help) and as pitch for ship hulls (which had a tendency to catch fire, thus limiting its usefulness). Some people had the idea that oil was a newfound cleverness of the nineteenth century. This poem (quoted from "Sketches in Crude" a book edited by John J. McLauren in 1896 at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) called Hooray for Petroleum tried to squelch that sentiment:
Don't make the mistake that Petroleum
Like the kodak, the bike, or linoleum
Is something decidedly new;
Whereas it was known in the Garden
When Eve, fig-leafed Dolly Varden,
Gave Adam the apple to chew.
Nor deem it a human invention,
By reason of newspaper mention
Just lately commanding attention,
Because it is Nature's own brew.
Repeatedly named in the Bible,
Let none its antiquity libel
Or seek to explain it away.
It garnished Methuselah's table,
Was used by the builders of Babel
And pilgrims from distant Cathay;
When Pharaoh and Moses were chummy
It help'd preserve many a mummy,
Still dreadfully life-like and gummy
In Egypt's stone tombs from decay!
At Baku Jove's thunderbolts fir'd it,
Devout Zaroaster admir'd it
As deity symbol'd in flame;
Parsees from the realms of Darius,
Unwearedly earnest and pious,
Adoring and worshiping came.
It cur'd Noah's Ham of trichina,
Greas'd babies and pigtails in China
Heal'd Arabs from far-off Medina -
The blind, the halt and the lame!
Herodotus saw it at Zante,
It blazed in the visions of Dante
And pyres of supine Hindostan:
The tropics and zone have rich fountains,
It bubbles 'mid snow-covered mountains
And flows in the pits of Japan.
Confin'd to no country or nation,
A blessing of God's whole creation
For light, heat and prime lubrication
All hail this grand gift to man!
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