Abstract
IF we survey the course of evolution of petroleum technology, particularly as it concerns the treatment, refining and utilisation of crude oil and its products, it is an impressive fact that despite a magnitude of growth and ramifications of the industry it supports in modern life, equally an obvious dependence throughout on the functions of certain applied major sciences, it has long maintained, outwardly at all events, a remarkable measure of autonomy. No one ever seriously suggested, because chemistry and physics, for example, enter largely into the technique of manufacture of innumerable products from the raw material, that this technology is ipso facto an offspring of co-ordinated influences of these or any other sciences. On the contrary, oil technology has grown in an almost unique fashion. It has been urged by an overwhelming but universal impulse. It has rapidly strengthened from an innate knowledge of its inherent power as a world force, casually absorbing, but diligently applying, just those established principles of appropriate natural science as would meet its needs. It has known few of the struggles of just as important, but none the less subservient, industrial technologies.
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M., H. Petroleum Technology and Chemical Industry. Nature 131, 145–146 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131145a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131145a0