Abstract
THE well-known technical periodical The Petroleum Times has recently celebrated its golden jubilee in a manner fitting alike to a great industry—its raison d'ětre— and to itself. The jubilee number contains a review of the evolution of British oil development during the past fifty years, the story being told in serial form covering successive five-year periods. Starting with some notes on the founding of the journal and on pioneers in the oil industry, the first five years (1900–4) are considered to be the lamp-oil era ; the next period (1905–9) is one of laying solid foundations, the grasp of what the word petrol is destined to mean to the world in general and to Great Britain in particular. 1910–14 brings a spurt in commercial development with the overcoming of technical and fiscal obstacles, culminating in the First World War, which, whatever else it did not do for mankind, certainly brought the industry to maturity and placed petroleum in the forefront of international commerce. The first-war period 1915–19 is a record of crises in oil supplies, desperate searches for substitutes, measures of government control and, thereafter, the extraordinary development of the oil resources of the world.
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The Petroleum Times (1899–1949). Nature 164, 267–268 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164267c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164267c0