466  Contributions  to  Industrial  Chemistry.  { A™ctober  m*™' 
and  the  production  of  new  products  for  which  uses  were  speedily 
found.  We  desire  to  make,  this  evening,  brief  reference  to  some 
of  these  American-developed  chemical  industries. 
The  first  to  note  chronologically  as  well  as  the  first  in  importance 
is  the  great  petroleum  industry.  Isolated  occurrences  of  natural 
oils,  combustible  in  character,  had  been  observed  in  various  parts 
of  the  world,  just  as  natural  gas  had  been  noted  as  a  matter  of  in- 
terest to  the  mineralogist  and  to  the  traveller.  For  instance,  in  1833, 
the  elder  Silliman  and,  in  1836,  Dr.  S.  P.  Hildreth  described  the  oc- 
currence of  oil  springs.  From  the  surface  of  these  the  Indians  had 
collected  what  was  called  Seneca  oil.  I  have  myself  a  pint  sample 
of  such  oil  from  a  spring  in  Ohio  that  is  reported  locally  to  have 
yielded  oil  from  181 3  to  the  present.  The  Rock  Oil  Company, 
which  afterwards  became  the  Seneca  Oil  Company,  had  engaged  Col. 
E.  L.  Drake  as  its  manager,  and  on  August  28,  1859,  he  struck  oil 
at  a  depth  of  69  feet  in  a  well  that  he  had  drilled  near  Titusville, 
Pa.,  which  started  off  with  a  daily  yield  of  25  barrels.  From  this 
mustard-seed  has  grown  the  great  American  petroleum  industry, 
which  in  1914  produced  265,762,535  barrels  or  66.36  per  cent,  of 
the  world's  production. 
However,  it  is  not  simply  a  question  of  being  first  in  the  dis- 
covery of  how  to  obtain  the  oil  from  its  subterranean  deposits.  The 
distillation  of  the  crude  oil  for  the  purpose  of  separating  the  lighter 
from  the  heavier  portions  and  refining  them  so  that  they  could  be 
used  as  burning  oils,  lubricating  oils,  etc.,  was  developed  entirely 
independently  in  this  country.  The  distilling  of  shale  oil  and  the 
preparation  of  a  merchantable  product  for  use  as  an  illuminant  under 
the  name  of  "  coal-oil  "  had  already  been  practised  when  Drake's 
discovery  was  announced  and  petroleum  distilleries  speedily  sprang 
up.  Then  the  accidental  discovery,  as  it  is  claimed,  of  the  pos- 
sibilities of  increasing  the  yield  of  light  fractions  by  what  is  known 
as  "  cracking,"  about  1865,  made  it  possible  to  get  a  maximum 
yield  of  kerosene  fraction  from  the  crude. 
When,  later,  the  large  production  of  a  crude  oil  in  California, 
differing  greatly  from  the  Pennsylvania  crude  first  developed  in- 
dustrially, led  to  the  establishment  of  the  distinction  between  paraf- 
fin-base crudes  and  asphalt-base  crudes,  the  preparation  of  an 
artificial  asphalt  from  California  oil  followed. 
Because  of  the  large  utilization  of  asphaltic  materials  for  paving, 
roofing,  waterproofing,  etc.,  the  manufacture  of  artificial  asphalts 
