The invention of new oil lamps in the late 1700s and early 1800s greatly improved the quality of indoor lighting, but the supply of fuel for these lamps was limited. Whale oil and other fuels were too expensive to compete with gas lighting, which was gaining popularity at the time. Then, Abraham Gesner (1797-1864) produced kerosene, a pale liquid fuel that he distilled from thick crude oil. Gesner, a medical doctor from Canada who had become interested in geology, named the fuel after the word keros (Greek for wax) and obtained United States patents for preparing it. When kerosene was successfully introduced in America in the 1850s, Gesner remarked hopefully that it might save whales from being hunted for their oil.

Around the same time, the Scottish scientist James Young (1811-1883) also began promoting the use of kerosene, which he produced by distillation from coal and oil shale...