The history of gasoline started around the invention of internal combustion engines suitable for use in transportation applications. The so-called Otto engines were developed in Germany during the last quarter of the 19th century. The fuel for these early engines was a relatively volatile hydrocarbon obtained from coal gas. With a boiling point near (n-octane boils at ), it was well-suited for early carburetors (evaporators). The development of a "spray nozzle" carburetor enabled the use of less volatile fuels. Further improvements in engine efficiency were attempted at higher compression ratios, but early attempts were blocked by the premature explosion of fuel, known as knocking.
In 1891, the Shukhov cracking process became the world's first commercial method to break down heavier hydrocarbons in crude oil to increase the percentage of lighter products compared to simple distillation.
Etymology
The American English word gasoline denotes fuel for automobiles, which common usage shortened to the terms gas, or rarely motor gas and mogas, thus differentiating it from avgas (aviation gasoline), which is fuel for airplanes. English dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary, show that the term gasoline originates from gas plus the chemical suffixes -ol/-ole and -ene/-ine.gasoline". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2024. However, a blog post at the defunct website Oxford Dictionaries alternatively proposes that the word may have originated from the surname of British businessman John Cassell, who supposedly first marketed the substance.
In place of the word gasoline, most Commonwealth countries (except Canada) use the term "petrol", and North Americans more often use "gas" in common parlance, hence the prevalence of the usage gas station in the United States.See:
38th Congress. Sessions I. Chapter 173: An Act to provide Internal Revenue to support the Government, to pay Interest on the Public Debt, and for other Purposes, 1864, p. 265. "And provided, also, That naphtha of specific gravity exceeding eighty degrees, according to Baume's hydrometer, and of the kind usually known as gasoline, shall be subject to a tax of five per centum ad valorem." See Library of Congress (US) Stevens, Levi, "Improved apparatus for vaporizing and aerating volatile hydrocarbon", U.S. Patent no. 45,568 (issued: 20 December 1864). From p. 2 of the text: "One of the products obtained from the distillation of petroleum is a colorless liquid having an ethereal odor and being the lightest in specific gravity of all known liquids. This material is known now in commerce by the term 'gasoline'."
Coined from Medieval Latin, the word (L. , rock + , oil) initially denoted types of mineral oil derived from rocks and stones.Medieval Latin: literally, rock oil = Latin petr(a) rock (< Greek pétra) + oleum oil. The word "Gasolene" itself is first attested in 1863 in Britain, apparently as a trademark, "Gasoline" appears to be a variant of this. In Britain, Petrol was a refined mineral oil product marketed as a solvent from the 1870s by the British wholesaler Carless Refining and Marketing Ltd. When Petrol found a later use as a motor fuel, Frederick Simms, an associate of Gottlieb Daimler, suggested to John Leonard, owner of Carless, that they trademark the word and uppercase spelling Petrol. The trademark application was refused because petrol had already become an established general term for motor fuel. Due to the firm's age, Carless retained the legal rights to the term and to the uppercase spelling of "Petrol" as the name of a petrochemical product.
British refiners originally used "motor spirit" as a generic name for the automotive fuel and "aviation spirit" for aviation gasoline. When Carless was denied a trademark on "petrol" in the 1930s, its competitors switched to the more popular name "petrol". However, "motor spirit" had already made its way into laws and regulations, so the term remains in use as a formal name for petrol. The term is used most widely in Nigeria, where the largest petroleum companies call their product "premium motor spirit". Although "petrol" has made inroads into Nigerian English, "premium motor spirit" remains the formal name that is used in scientific publications, government reports, and newspapers.
Some other languages use variants of gasoline. is used in Spanish and Portuguese, and is used in Japanese. In other languages, the name of the product is derived from the hydrocarbon compound benzene, or more precisely from the class of products called petroleum benzine, such as in German or in Italian; but in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, the colloquial name is derived from that of the chemical naphtha.
Some languages, like French and Italian, use the respective words for gasoline to instead indicate diesel fuel.
Brief technical timeline Subsequent to the inventions of Daimler, Benz, Otto, and others the growth in the production and consumption of gasoline involved many innovations. One might summarize the timeline in the following way: the first 50 years were focused on the internal combustion engine and on refinery operations and, post 1970, emphasis has been placed on safety and automobile emissions. 1900-1910 invention of spray carbeurator allowed use of "straight run gasoline" with vehicles. Straight run gasoline is obtained simply by distillation of petroleum. 1910-1920 improvements in compression ratio gave automobiles more power 1920–1930 engine knocking, which limited advances in compression ratio, is addressed with tetraethyllead 1930–1950 Eugene Houdry and other introduced and steadily improved catalytic cracking technologies, allowing a greater proportion of petroleum to be used for fuels 1940–1990 improved catalysts are introduced based on zeolites, molybdenum, and platinum for cracking, desulfurization, and reforming. These technologies provided cleaner burning high octane fuels 1970–1990 tetraethyllead is replaced by octane enhancers, and catalytic converters are introduced.
Effects of world wars on gasoline
1903 to 1914 The evolution of gasoline followed the evolution of oil as the dominant source of energy in the industrializing world. Before World War I, Britain was the world's greatest industrial power and depended on its navy to protect the shipping of raw materials from its colonies. Germany was also industrializing and, like Britain, lacked many natural resources which had to be shipped to the home country. By the 1890s, Germany began to pursue a policy of global prominence and began building a navy to compete with Britain's. Coal was the fuel that powered their navies. Though both Britain and Germany had natural coal reserves, new developments in oil as a fuel for ships changed the situation. Coal-powered ships were a tactical weakness because the process of loading coal was slow and dirty and left the ship completely vulnerable to attack, and unreliable supplies of coal at international ports made long-distance voyages impractical. The advantages of petroleum oil soon found the navies of the world converting to oil, but Britain and Germany had very few domestic oil reserves.Daniel Yergen, The Prize, The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, Simon & Schuster, 1992, pp. 150–63. Britain eventually solved its naval oil dependence by securing oil from Royal Dutch Shell and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and this determined from where and of what quality its gasoline would come.
During the early period of gasoline engine development, aircraft were forced to use motor vehicle gasoline since aviation gasoline did not yet exist. These early fuels were termed "straight-run" gasolines and were byproducts from the distillation of a single crude oil to produce kerosene, which was the principal product sought for burning in kerosene lamps. Gasoline production would not surpass kerosene production until 1916. The earliest straight-run gasolines were the result of distilling eastern crude oils and there was no mixing of distillates from different crudes. The composition of these early fuels was unknown, and the quality varied greatly. The engine effects produced by abnormal combustion (engine knocking and pre-ignition) due to inferior fuels had not yet been identified, and as a result, there was no rating of gasoline in terms of its resistance to abnormal combustion. The general specification by which early gasolines were measured was that of specific gravity via the Baumé scale and later the volatility (tendency to vaporize) specified in terms of boiling points, which became the primary focuses for gasoline producers. These early eastern crude oil gasolines had relatively high Baumé test results (65 to 80 degrees Baumé) and were called "Pennsylvania high-test" or simply "high-test" gasolines. These were often used in aircraft engines.
By 1910, increased automobile production and the resultant increase in gasoline consumption produced a greater demand for gasoline. Also, the growing electrification of lighting produced a drop in kerosene demand, creating a supply problem. It appeared that the burgeoning oil industry would be trapped into over-producing kerosene and under-producing gasoline since simple distillation could not alter the ratio of the two products from any given crude. The solution appeared in 1911 when the development of the Burton process allowed thermal cracking of crude oils, which increased the percent yield of gasoline from the heavier hydrocarbons. This was combined with the expansion of foreign markets for the export of surplus kerosene which domestic markets no longer needed. These new thermally "cracked" gasolines were believed to have no harmful effects and would be added to straight-run gasolines. There also was the practice of mixing heavy and light distillates to achieve the desired Baumé reading and collectively these were called "blended" gasolines.Matthew Van Winkle, Aviation Gasoline Manufacture, McGraw-Hill, 1944, pp. 1–4.
Gradually, volatility gained favor over the Baumé test, though both continued to be used in combination to specify a gasoline. As late as June 1917, Standard Oil (the largest refiner of crude oil in the United States at the time) stated that the most important property of a gasoline was its volatility. It is estimated that the rating equivalent of these straight-run gasolines varied from 40 to 60 octane and that the "high-test", sometimes referred to as "fighting grade", probably averaged 50 to 65 octane.Matthew Van Winkle, Aviation Gasoline Manufacture, McGraw-Hill, 1944, p. 10.
World War I Prior to the United States entry into World War I, the European Allies used fuels derived from crude oils from Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, which gave satisfactory performance in their military aircraft. When the U.S. entered the war in April 1917, the U.S. became the principal supplier of aviation gasoline to the Allies and a decrease in engine performance was noted. Soon it was realized that motor vehicle fuels were unsatisfactory for aviation, and after the loss of several combat aircraft, attention turned to the quality of the gasolines being used. Later flight tests conducted in 1937 showed that an octane reduction of 13 points (from 100 down to 87 octane) decreased engine performance by 20 percent and increased take-off distance by 45 percent.Matthew Van Winkle, Aviation Gasoline Manufacture, McGraw-Hill, 1944, p. 252 If abnormal combustion were to occur, the engine could lose enough power to make getting airborne impossible and a take-off roll became a threat to the pilot and aircraft.