History of energy from 1850 to 1900

Summary: The period between 1850 and 1900 was marked by the Second Industrial Revolution in many Western societies and an accompanying energy transition from traditional energy sources to coal and later petroleum.

The second half of the 19th century was a period of intensified and diversified use of coal. Coal had fueled the industrial revolution that had started in Great Britain in the 18th century and spread over continental Europe and the United States to Russia and Japan in the 19th century. Between 1850 and 1900, coal, petroleum, and electricity set the stage for higher rates of industrial productivity, urbanization, and consumer culture; it affected transport, hygiene, nutrition, and leisure. Beyond that, electricity in particular brought about a growing detachment of the consuming appliances and their users from the location of energy production.

Although many of the period’s technological advancements were based on earlier inventions, between 1850 and 1900 they became marketable and mass-produced, thereby allowing for the so-called Second Industrial Revolution. This time period was also transitional with regard to energy production and consumption. It was marked not only by the supplementation of traditional energy sources such as wood, wind, water, and solar power with coal and to some extent petroleum, but also by new manners of producing and consuming energy that had a profound impact on the way we think about energy, industry, and the environment and modern conveniences. Although this energy transition was neither abrupt nor all-encompassing and it exposed great regional and temporal differences, it changed industries and societies dramatically.

Industrial Revolution

In the first half of the 19th century, wood, water, and wind power had been the predominant energy sources. Aside from minor technological advances, these sources had basically been used since ancient times. One of their major drawbacks had been their unpredictability: Windmills were dependent on steady winds, and waterwheels could be employed only near waterways and the sea. Charcoal, made from slowly burned timber with restricted air supply, had been used widely in iron production and other industries in the 17th and 18th centuries and eventually resulted in scarcity of wood.

The growing fear of shortages in energy resources led to a search for substitutes, intensifying the use of coal in the 19th century. Although Britain had already used coal for glassmaking and salt extraction, it was the iron and steel industry that drove the usage of coal forward. In fact, innovators in the 17th century had already found a viable way of producing coke by airtight heating of bituminous coal. Together with major innovations in iron making, brought about by the Englishman Henry Bessemer and the German Alfred Krupp in the 1850s and 1860s, coke became an indispensable energy source for the booming steel industry. Between 1850 and 1900, worldwide extraction of pit coal increased from 72 to 707 million tons, with Britain maintaining its primacy until the end of the 19th century, when it was surpassed by the United States.

With growing demand, however, the mining of coal became more difficult. The depletion of seams in easy-to-access outcrops required deeper and more extensive digging. To pump the groundwater that accumulated during mining, steam engines converting coal’s chemical energy into mechanical energy were used. Dating back into the 17th century, steam engines were improved by English and American engineers after James Watt’s patent had run out in 1800, resulting in more powerful and efficient engines by the 1850s. Coal-fueled steam engines now became available both as massive engines powering large machinery and as small, low-pressure engines that provided power for smaller workshops. Around the middle of the 19th century in Britain, where textile mills were one of the prime movers of industrialization, waterwheels were increasingly replaced with more flexible steam power.

For the first time in history, the use of energy-intensive coal in steam engines allowed for the spatial separation between energy source and energy converter, resulting in increased and more cost-effective industrial production. One of the effects was ever-increasing demand for coal, which could be met only with the help of improved coal mining and more effective transportation.

Transport

Between 1850 and 1900, the transportation system was changed by the intensified use of coal and by the steam engine. Major developments in steam-powered transportation on land and sea had begun in the late 18th century, but it was only in the second part of the 19th century that steam-powered trains gained momentum. By 1860, more than 8,639 miles (16,000 kilometers) of tracks had been laid in Britain. In the Americas, the Isthmus of Panama was crossed by railroad in 1855, dramatically shortening the trip from eastern to western North and Central America.

Moreover, in the United States, the overland route by rail known now as the Transcontinental Railroad was built between 1863 and 1869, providing a direct link between the east and west coasts. The spread of steam train transportation was closely intertwined with innovations in steel production that enabled faster laying of track and more efficient extraction of coal, which was needed as fuel for the trains. Thus, the increase in use of coal furthered the expansion of the railroad system, which in turn augmented coal industry technology and sales.

For passengers, overland travel became faster and cheaper and allowed for greater mobility. Although the massive weight of steam engines and powerful competition by horse-drawn services thwarted the application of coal-fueled steam power for off-rail transportation, shipping profited from the energy transition. Sailing was not replaced overnight, but the fact that coal-fueled engines did not depend on favorable weather, coupled with technological advances such as iron hulls and propellers, made steamships an attractive alternative for the transportation of both goods and passengers. Between 1840 and 1890, the travel time for an Atlantic crossing was reduced from 10 to fewer than six days.

Domestic Energy Use

The developing networks of transportation and industry also led to growing industrialized urban centers in need of infrastructure. As more and more people became disconnected from agricultural markets and traditional energy resources, the need for a widespread power and food-supply system became more pressing. Households had previously relied on wood and coal for heating and cooking and animal fats such as whale oil and tallow candles for lighting. The use of these energy sources in the household, however, had severe drawbacks: The burning of coal and coke set free unpleasant, even toxic fumes; they were highly inflammable and required adjustments in chimneys and furnaces.

As demand grew, these resources also became increasingly expensive. In the second half of the century, coal gas (a by-product of coke production) became a viable alternative for lighting, heating, and cooking. However, due to its often impure quality, it did not replace older energy sources as quickly and as completely as could have been expected. It was only with the help of clever marketing strategies of developing gas companies—including leasing programs for appliances, precise gas meters, and the invention of pressurized gas pipelines—that household connections to gasworks in urban areas expanded in the last two decades of the 19th century. For rural households, the less expensive oil-gas, a by-product of the evolving petroleum industry, represented a better alternative, and soon electricity became a serious rival of gas for domestic energy use.

Petroleum

Although it was the 20th century that would become known as the age of petroleum, its roots lie in the second half of the 19th century. Like coal, petroleum had been known since ancient times, but it became important as a potential energy resource only in the context of industrialization. As prices for illuminating oils escalated, oil-gas gained as a by-product of crude oil refining became an affordable option. Other uses of petroleum that would become significant in the age of automobiles remained largely obscure at this point.

Major impulses for a petroleum industry came from North America, where crude oil had been noticed on the surface by early explorers. Originally seeing it as a nuisance because it polluted his salt wells, the Pennsylvanian Samuel M. Kier started to sell bottled crude oil (petroleum jelly) as a medicine, a lubricant for textile machinery, and carbon oil for lamps. Already in the 1840s, the German-Canadian physician and geologist Abraham P. Gesner had developed a process to gain kerosene from coal or petroleum. Having received a patent in 1854, he established the Kerosene Gaslight Company, which installed street lighting in Halifax and other Canadian cities. Along with Kier and Gesner, other resourceful entrepreneurs appeared on the scene. In 1859, the United States’ first oil well was drilled 69 feet (21 meters) below the surface in Titusville, Pennsylvania. It hit one of the world’s largest oil fields, transforming Pennsylvania into one of the world’s leading oil-producing regions for the next 40 years, accounting for half of the global production of crude oil. After 1900, America’s Southwest became the main petroleum region, along with nations such as Azerbaijan and Iran. Between 1859 and 1871, crude oil production increased from only 2,000 barrels to 5,350,000 barrels annually.

With the advent of the petroleum industry, not only energy sources but also economic frameworks changed. The new industry became personified by the New Yorker John D. Rockefeller, who entered the oil business in the early 1860s. In 1870, Rockefeller established the Standard Oil Company, which rapidly grew into the most profitable oil refinery business. By horizontal expansion through the acquisition of other refiners, and vertical acquisitions covering all segments from production and refining to transportation and marketing, Rockefeller built a trust of more than 40 companies that controlled more than 90 percent of total U.S. refining capacity in the 1880s. Because of his controversial business practices, Rockefeller and his company became a target of antitrust activism, and in 1911 the U.S. Supreme Court declared it a monopoly and ordered that it be broken up.

The Coming Age of Electricity

For the daily lives of millions of people in Western industrializing nations, the impact of petroleum as a primary energy source would be felt only in the 20th century. Electricity, on the other hand, started changing their lives immediately. As a secondary energy source, electricity was the first universally usable energy to be transformed into warmth, light, motion, or chemical energy; moreover, it was no longer spatially confined to the place of its production. For electricity to conquer the world, however, three things had to come together: technological innovations in its production and distribution, political and economic willingness to invest in the technologies necessary (including the funding and building of large networks of distribution), and sufficient demand from industrial and private consumers. Unlike coal or petroleum, electricity not only has to be transmitted but also must be produced. In fact, it needs to be produced, transmitted, and consumed at the same time. Storing electricity is difficult, inefficient, and cost-intensive.

Refining the electrical generator, first built by Michael Faraday in 1831, the German engineer Werner von Siemens constructed an improved generator using electromagnetic principles to convert mechanical energy into electric energy. Reversing this principle, electric motors turning electrical into mechanical energy were also introduced. Freeing manufacturing from transmission belts and providing easy access to mechanical energy, electric motors from then on changed industry and craft.

Furthering the electrification of Europe and North America were not only technological inventions but also a growing demand for improved lighting. Gas lighting—though better than oil lamps—proved to be noisy, smelly, and quite dim. Although versions of incandescent lamps such as Pavel Yablochkov’s carbon arc lamp were already available in the 1880s, it was Thomas Alva Edison’s lightbulb that pushed both electrical lighting and general electrification forward. Several inventors and engineers before Edison had succeeded in constructing electric lamps, such as the American Moses G. Farmer and the Englishman Joseph Swan, but it was Edison who created a commercially successful version and laid the groundwork for an electrical supply system needed for large-scale sales. Instead of relying on a metal filament, which proved to be too expensive for mass production, Edison used carbonized cotton threads for his incandescent lamps.

Aside from this improvement, Edison’s success was grounded in his visionary thinking directed toward the commercial market. Instead of concentrating on the technical side of his invention alone, he planned an entire electrical system to support use of his lamps, including the bulb’s fitting, vacuum pumps for bulb production, electrical cords, and meters. In 1880, he established the Edison Illuminating Company, and four years later he successfully ran the first electrical plant ever, on Pearl Street in Manhattan, which provided more than 500 consumers with electrical power for more than 10,000 incandescent lamps. Over the following decades, urban industrialized areas constructed electric power plants, connecting a growing number of factories and households to the expanding electrical grid.

Two problems, however, slowed this process. One was the great variety in frequency and voltage that the different networks used; the other was the great loss of energy during the distribution of power. During the so-called War of Currents in the 1880s, proponents of direct current (DC), among them Edison, faced supporters of the alternating current (AC), advocated by Edison’s main rival, George Westinghouse, and the Serbian-American engineer Nikola Tesla. AC, which flowed in alternately reversed directions through or around a circuit, allowed for higher voltages for transmission over longer distances, thus diminishing the otherwise high energy losses. Having proven the practicability of Tesla’s AC generator and power system in several instances—among them the illumination of the World’s Fair: Columbian Exposition, a milestone event in Chicago in 1893—Westinghouse succeeded, and the AC system became the standard in the United States and many other countries. The technical advances in the production and transmission of electric energy also allowed for a greater diversification of primary energy resources—resulting, for example, in the building of hydroelectric plants.

Despite the growing number of applications for electrical power in private households, electricity remained in competition with gas and other energy sources. In fact, although electrical lighting started to spread in the last decade of the 19th century, it became clear that, in the long run, lighting would not utilize the full capacity of the electrical supply network. Many potential consumers felt intimidated by the intangibility of electricity, causing them to shy away from its application. In order to balance high load curves and increase sales, electricity suppliers—who often were also appliance manufacturers—promoted the use of electricity for cooking, heating, and ironing. For most of the 19th century, however, only wealthy individuals could afford electrical gadgets like cigar lighters, electric bed warmers, and telephones. Generally, the period between 1850 and 1900 can be seen as a prologue to what would become the electric era after 1900—and, especially in rural areas of Western societies, after World War I.

Outside private homes, electricity found its way into public transportation in the 1880s and 1890s. The world’s first electric tramway line was installed in Berlin in 1881, and the first electric automobiles—albeit with heavy and insufficient batteries—were developed as well. Siemens introduced the first electric elevator in 1880, thereby pushing forward skyscraper construction, and at the Columbian Exposition in 1893 an electrically driven moving sidewalk captured the fascination of the masses.

Monopolization and Regulation

Characteristic of the period was the development and spread of large-scale energy networks. It soon became clear that small supply networks were not sustainable. The large amounts of capital needed for the installation of networks required standardization, especially in the case of electricity, and thus fostered business mergers. Particularly in the United States, where both technological know-how and capital came together, monopolization led to the creation of huge electrical companies like General Electric and Westinghouse, which were involved in everything from the distribution infrastructure to the appliances powered by electricity. While these vertically integrated businesses fostered standardization, monopolization would also lead to consumers’ mistrust of the seemingly omnipotent power companies by century’s end.

Significance of the Time Period

Between 1850 and 1900, important technical innovations were made in the field of energy production. Existing techniques dating back into the 18th century, such as the steam engine, were refined and applied to new tasks, while new technologies such as the AC motor and generator were developed to help introduce and spread the new secondary energy form, electricity. Along with these technical changes came political, social, and cultural changes that influenced the speed and manner of diffusion of many energy sources. Although large transitional moments can be identified—the intensified use of coal, the beginnings of oil extraction, the beginning of electrification—there are few clear-cut milestones, and at no time did one energy resource completely replace another. Rather, the energy transitions were regionally different, depending on the availability of resources, use patterns, and preferences, and often several energy forms competed over one field of application.

Politically and socially, the history of energy between 1850 and 1900 is ambivalent. On one hand, more efficient energy use allowed for intensified imperialism, which in turn aimed at the exploitation of natural resources in colonies. On the other hand, electricity in particular paved the way for widespread democratized accessibility to energy. The one thing lacking during this period was a critical assessment of the sustainability of new energy systems. Although scattered voices, such as that of William Stanley Jevons in his book The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines (1865), had warned about potential limits to growth and energy scarcity, the majority of engineers, politicians, scientists, and consumers by 1900 were readily convinced that energy abundance had been ensured.

Bibliography

Bowers, Brian. Lengthening the Day: A History of Lighting Technology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Fouquet, Roger. Heat, Power, and Light: Revolutions in Energy Services. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2008.

Jevons, William Stanley. The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines. London: Macmillan, 1865.

Nye, David E. Consuming Power. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.

Smil, Vaclav. Energy in World History. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994.

Weissenbacher, Manfred. Sources of Power: How Energy Forges Human History. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2009.