DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHWAY TRAVEL — MITMAN 341 



throwing obstructions in the road and by imposing road tolls, which 

 in some instances, amounted to half the cost of operating the coaches. 

 Undisturbed b}^ this, Walter Hancock in England built 9 steam 

 coaches between 1827 and 1838, and in 1832 started a regular steam 

 omnibus service between London and Paddington. By 1833 there 

 were as many as 20 steam buses traveling in and around London, and 

 there seemed some hope that the steam automobile was to remain in 

 spite of its noise and smoke. The " Koad Locomotive Act ", however, 

 passed by the British Parliament in 1836 imposed such an enormous 

 tax on these vehicles that it caused the immediate abandonment of all 

 such enter^Drises. Although this was a bitter blow to the promoters 

 of steam-coach service, they were, even then, aware of a growing 

 diversion of their traffic to the new steam railways and no doubt 

 realized that the latter would eventually bring about the closing down 

 of their projects. 



From 1836 to 1876 steam railways held the center of the stage, and 

 the only interest manifested in self-propelled vehicles for highway 

 travel was that shown by the occasional inventor in Europe and 

 America who timidly demonstrated his improvements in steam car- 

 riages. Meanwhile two events occurred in the United States which in 

 themselves had no bearing whatever on highway travel but which were 

 of tremendous importance later in the development of the automobile. 



Explorers following Christopher Columbus to America occasion- 

 ally discovered, particularly in what is now western New York and 

 Pennsylvania, small springs and pools of oil and in recording these 

 discoveries went on to describe how the Indians used this oily, foul- 

 smelling stuff for certain medicinal purposes. Subsequently the im- 

 migrant settlers in America began using this so-called seepage oil 

 as the Indians did, and for generations thereafter it was considered 

 by many as the panacea of all human ills. In 1850 in Pittsburgh, 

 Pa., Samuel Kier, who had been bottling and selling through drug- 

 gists " Kier's Rock Oil ", had difficulty disposing in this way of all of 

 the crude oil flowing from his salt wells at Tarentum and began 

 experimenting with the oil as an illuminant. When burned it gave 

 off an offensive odor and much smoke, and Kier, at the suggestion of 

 a chemist, tried to refine the oil by distillation. He eventually suc- 

 ceeded in doing this on a commercial scale and thus became America's 

 first oil refiner and showed the way to the production of gasoline. 

 A few years after this, Edwin L. Drake drilled a well at Titusville, 

 Pa., from which there began flowing on August 27, 1859, a thousand 

 gallons of petroleum a day. This started the great oil industry in 

 America. 



The discovery and availability of these new liquid fuels rekindled 

 an interest in steam-propelled vehicles, the pioneers in this instance 



