3-011-838 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Petroleum Oil Works at Franklin, Pennsylvania, 1864. In 1859. 'The apparatus to be seen at Oil Creek is of a simple description, consisting of large wooden cisterns sunk in the ground to receive the oil which rises through tubes let down into the borings. It is then drawn from the cisterns and put into barrels for exportation...For the readier conveyance of the petroleum oil to the railway stations in the oil-producing district, the company is now laying down iron pipes, through which the oil will be forced from the tanks at the wells by powerful steam-pumps...The petroleum oil is sent from America in a crude state, just as it pours out of the earth. The business of refining and preparing it for use is extensively carried on in England and France...Experiments have lately been made, by order of the French Government, to test its value as fuel for the engines of their steam navy. It has been proved that a given quantity of this substance will generate, in half the time, as much steam as could be produced by burning twice the weight of coal. It seems likely that the introduction of this portable fuel will have a great effect upon the development of steam navigation'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.