I'm watching the History channel.
I love that channel!
And I'm watching a show about JP Morgan, John Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie and their exploits in the 1890's.
Tons of cool info, but not enough room to type about it. Go watch it yourselves.
Anyway, JP Morgan screwed Edison out of Edison Electric and renamed it General Electric and went with Tesla's AC power over Edison's DC power and most of you know the rest of that story.
Meanwhile, Rockefeller owned Standard Oil and had amassed a fortune in oil.
Keep in mind that our dollar had not yet been devalued. So these guys were richer than GOD. $50 Million, for instance, is the equivalent of 1 BILLION dollars today (yep...our currency is worth 95% LESS than it's value was then).
Anyway, Rockefeller's money in the oil business came from making kerosene for lanterns. That's how people had light. But now that JP Morgan was wiring up the country with electricity, Rockefeller had to do something.
So he had an idea...seems there was this residue run-off during the process of refining oil. Up until this time, they were dumping it (throwing it away, mostly into rivers causing TREMENDOUS environmental damage).
Nothing could be done with this "worthless" by-product because it was so explosive that it was just too dangerous.
They called it "gasoline". LOL!
So Rockefeller had his scientists begin working on things that they could do with gasoline. He was looking for another revenue stream since kerosene was about to collapse in front of electricity.
They came up with over 300 things to use if for. Among those things: Vaseline (petroleum jelly), chewing gum, tar, etc.
But the thing that changed the world was that the internal combustion engine had just been invented.
And guess what?
All the dangerous aspects of gasoline made it PERFECT for those engines. And when Rockefeller saw what happened when they put those engines on wheels...horseless carriages...he KNEW he had found his answer.
I found that interesting as hell.
Basically gasoline was just the garbage left over from refining oil! And that's why it's so damn cheap! Well, at least until the govt. added a couple of dollars worth of taxes to every gallon of it
The History Channel rocks!