If the uses to which oil might be put and the methods for manufacturing it had not been well understood when the Drake well was struck, there would have been no such impe rious demand as came for the immediate opening of new territory and developing methods of handling and carrying it on a large scale. But men knew already what the oil was good for, and, in a crude way, how to distil it. The process of distillation also was free to all. The essential apparatus was very simple—a cast-iron still, usually sur rounded by brick-work, a copper worm, and two tin- or zinc lined tanks. The still was filled with crude oil, which was subjected to a high enough heat to vapourise it. The vapour passed through a cast-iron goose-neck fitted to the top of the still into the copper worm, which was immersed in water. Here the vapour was condensed and passed into the zinc-lined tank. This product, called a distillate, was treated with chemicals, washed with water, and run off into the tin-lined tank, where it was allowed to settle. Anybody who could get the apparatus could "make oil," and many men did—badly, course, to begin with, and with an alarming proportion of 'waste and explosions and fires, but with experience they learned, and some of the great refineries of the country grew out of these rude beginnings.
Luckily not all the men who undertook the manufacturing of petroleum in these first days were inexperienced. The chemists to whom are due chiefly the processes now used— Atwood, Gessner, and Merrill—had for years been busy mak ing oils from coal. They knew something of petroleum, and when it came in quantities began at once to adapt their processes to it. Merrill at the time was connected with Samuel Downer, of Boston, in manufacturing oil from Trinidad pitch and from coal bought in Newfoundland. The year oil was dis :overed Mr. Downer distilled 7,50o tons of this coal, clear ,ng on it at least $ioo,000. As soon as petroleum appeared le and Mr. Merrill saw that here was a product which was pound to displace their coal, and with courage and prompt . less they prepared to adapt their works. In order to be near he supply they came to Corry, fourteen miles from the Drake Nell, and in 1862 put up a refinery which cost $250,0o0. Here were refined thousands of barrels of oil, most of which was ,ent to New York for export. To the Boston works the firm ,ent crude, which was manufactured for the home trade and for shipping to California and Australia. The processes used in the Downer works at this early day were in all essentials the same as are used to-day.
In 186s William Wright, after a careful study of "Petrolia," as the Oil Regions were then often called, pub lished with Harper and Brothers an interesting volume in which he devotes a chapter to "Oil Refining and Refiners." Mr. Wright describes there not only the Downer works at Corry, but a factory which if much less important in the development of the Oil Regions held a much larger place in its imagination. This was the Humboldt works at Plumer. In 1862 two Germans, brothers, the Messrs. Ludovici, came to the oil country and, choosing a spot distant from oil wells, main roads, or water courses, erected an oil refin ery which was reported to have cost a half million dollars. The works were built in a way unheard of then and uncom mon now. The foundations were all of cut stone. The boiler
and engines were of the most expensive character. A house erected in connection with the refinery was said to have been finished in hard wood with marble mantels, and fur nished with rich carpets, mirrors, and elaborate furniture. The lavishness of the Humboldt refinery and the formality with which its business was conducted were long a tradition in the Oil Regions. Of more practical moment are the features of the refinery which Mr. Wright mentions : one is that the works had been so planned as to take advantage of the natural descent of the ground so that the oil would pass from one set of vessels to another without using artificial power, and the other that the supply of crude oil was obtained from the Tarr farm three miles away, being forced by pumps, through pipes, over the hills.
Mr. Wright found some twenty refineries between Titus ville and Oil City the year of his visit, 1865. In several facto ries that he visited they were making naphtha, gasoline, and benzine for export. Three grades of illuminating oils—"prime white," "standard white," and "straw colour"—were made everywhere; paraffine, refined to a pure white article like that of to-day, was manufactured in quantities by the Downer works; and lubricating oils were beginning to be made.
As men and means were found to put down wells,_to devise and build tanks and boats and pipes anCrrailroads Jorhandling the oil, to adapt and improve processes for manufacturing, so men were found from the beginning of the oil business to wrestle with every problem raised. They came in shoals, young, vigorous, resourceful, indifferent to difficulties, greedy for a chance, and with each year they forced more light and wealth from the new product. By the opening of 1872 they had produced nearly 40,000,00o barrels of oil, and had raised their product_to ihe fourth place aiming the exports_aLthe United States, over 152,000,000 gallons going abroad in 1871, a percentage of the production which compares well with what goes to-day.* As for the market, they had developed it until it included almost every country of the earth—China, the East and West Indies, South America and Africa. Over forty different European ports received refined oil from the United States in 1871. Nearly a million gallons were sent to Syria, about a half million to Egypt, about as much to the British West Indies, and a quarter of a million to the Dutch East Indies. Not only were illuminating oils being exported. In 1871 nearly seven million gallons of naphtha, benzine, and gasoline were sent abroad, and it became evident now for the first time that a valuable trade in lubricants made from petroleunLwaa_possible. A discovery by Joshua Merrill of the Downer works opened this new source of wealth to the indus try. Until 1869 the impossibility of deodorising petroleum had prevented its use largely as a lubricant, but in that year Mr. Merrill discovered a process by which a deodorised lubricating oil could be made. He had both the apparatus for producing the oil and the oil itself patented. The oil was so favourably received that the market sale by the Downer works was several hundred per cent. greater in a single year than the firm had ever sold before.