Abraham Gesner:

Inventor of kerosene oil, founder of modern petroleum industry, and saver of whales

Prior to the 1800s, light was provided by torches, candles made from tallow, and lamps which burned oils rendered from animal fat. Because it burned with less odour and smoke than most fuels, whale oil, particularly oil from the nose of the sperm whale, became popular for lamp oils and candles. However, sperm oil, widely known as "spermaceti", was very expensive costing, in the early 1800s, about $2.00 per gallon, which in modern values equates to about $200 a gallon. A thriving whaling industry developed to provide sperm oil for lighting, and regular whale oil as a lubricant for the machine parts of trains. In the United States alone, the whaling fleet swelled from 392 ships in 1833 to 735 by 1846. In 1856, sperm oil sold for $1.77 a gallon, and the United States was producing 4 to 5 million gallons of spermaceti and 6 to 10 million gallons of train oil annually.

The demand for whale oil took a tremendous toll on whales, and some species were driven to the very brink of extinction. The right whale, one of the scarcer varieties, was killed in the early 1800s at a rate of about 15,000 per year. When the growing scarcity of this whale forced attention to other species, only about 50,000 right whales remained. Had demand for whale oil continued, extinction would have undoubtedly claimed several species.

When a clean-burning kerosene lamp invented by Michael Dietz appeared on the market in 1857, its effect on the whaling industry was immediate. Kerosene, known in those days as ‘Coal Oil’, was easy to produce, cheap, smelled better than animal-based fuels when burned, and did not spoil on the shelf as whale oil did. The public abandoned whale oil lamps almost overnight. By 1860, at least 30 kerosene plants were in production in the United States, and whale oil was ultimately driven off the market. When sperm oil dropped to 40 cents a gallon in 1895, due to lack of demand, refined petroleum, which was very much in demand, sold for less than 7 cents a gallon.

The September 3, 1860 edition of the California Fireside Journal sums up the attitude of the times: "Had it not been for the discovery of Coal Oil, the race of whales would soon have become extinct. It is estimated that ten years would have used up the whole family".

The discoverer of ‘coal oil’ was the Canadian Abraham Gesner who was born on May 2, 1797, near Cornwallis, Nova Scotia and died April 29, 1864, in Halifax where he had just become Professor of Chemistry at Dalhousie University.

Gesner was a physician, geologist, chemist, inventor, professor, and author. He became a medical student in London, England, and graduated as physician and surgeon. He also became the first government geologist in a British colony. He studied, described and mapped the distribution of rock formations in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Beginning about 1846 he developed experiments for distilling ‘coal oil’ from solid hydrocarbons and coined the name kerosene for the lamp oil he perfected by 1853, and patented his processes in 1854. Gesner first demonstrated the lighting ability of ‘coal oil’ in Charlottetown, PEI in 1846. His other inventions include one of the first effective wood preservatives, a process of asphalt paving for highways, briquettes made from compressed coal dust, and a machine for insulating electric wire. After overseeing the setup of a factory on Long Island, he sold his patents in 1863 and returned to Halifax and a professorship at Dalhousie University. He died in Halifax.