Anyone familiar with Back to the Future part III will remember one of the main plot points being that gas was neigh impossible to come by in the Ol’ West. Thereby forcing Doc Brown and Marty to push the Delorean (with the busted fuel line) along a railroad track with a modified steam train up the the requisite 88 mph.
In the past, I’ve always taken it for granted that gas would have been extremely hard to come by back then, in the old west. But was it really?
…and, of course I meant nigh impossible. :smack:
According to Wikipedia in the 1800’s gasoline was sold in small bottles as a lice treatment, under the brand ‘Petrol’. So it would have been available, although I’m not sure what the quality would have been like. It might have had so many other additives and been of a low enough octane that it wouldn’t work in a modern car.
Why would people need to have gasoline around in 1885? That happens to be the year that the earliest version of today’s type of gasoline engines were invented but that was in Germany. I can’t think of much reason people in the Old West would have gasoline in bulk on hand if there wasn’t much of a practical application for it.
With no actual engine burning the stuff, who would have been spending the money and energy to develop and distribute it? kerosene was around, but gasoline (and any engine it powered) was a novelty.
A number of people invented “gas” engines between the mid 1860s and 1890, but how many of them ever made it to production, thus requiring the refining of gasoline, is problematic.
Reading newspapers from 1875-1885, it would appear that there was quite a use for “gasoline” although I can’t confirm just what the octane was and whether it would power a modern car.
Coleman-type gasoline stoves were available at that time. And just about every newspaper in the US on a weekly basis would have a story about people getting burned and buildings being destroyed by a “gasoline” fire. They used the gasoline in lamps to produce light.
People at that time just didn’t appreciate how volatile “gasoline” was.
Wouldn’t that have been kerosene?
Now that I think about it, I recall reading that the components of gasoline were routinely burned off before the gasoline engine was invented, as it wasn’t considered a useful substance. You’d think an enterprising small town scientist might be able to get his hands on some for ‘experimental purposes’… (but not, on second though, before Monday morning…)
This may be of more than academic interest, as Google Ads is asking me if I’m building a Flux Capacitor, and if so I should go here here for plans. :dubious:
My quick answer is “No” not kerosene. I think the two were quite well distinct at the time. I’ll go back and look at some Scientific American articles and see if they tell what was the difference.
As best I can read from the period, “kerosene” was the bulk substance refined from crude oil(about 55% of the barrel). And “kerosene” had to have a flash point above 110 degrees F.
But, like all human endeavors, many people, including sellers, “cut” their kerosene with benzine, naptha and gasoline to make it cheaper.
When refining oil(in 1883), the crude naptha components were driven off first, and then the kerosene was collected. The crude naptha was then separately refined producing benzine, refined naptha, and gasoline.
An experiment performed at the time observed that if you added 1% naptha to an oil that flashed at 138[sup]o[/sup], the resultant product would flash at 103[sup]o[/sup]. If you added 2% naptha, it flashed at 93[sup]o[/sup] and with 10% it flashed at 59[sup]o[/sup]. Given that the naptha cost about half that of pure kerosene, the temptation was great.