TIL that whales were saved from massacre when kerosene appeared (1860s) because, until then, whale oil was widely used as illumination fuel.
TIL that whales were saved from massacre when kerosene appeared (1860s) because, until then, whale oil was widely used as illumination fuel.
It's crazy to think that we almost brought a class of animals to extinction, all because we had the arrogance to read in the dark.
We’ve killed off many other species simply by existing and expanding. And even more with what we do to the environment constantly.
Wait till you lean his many species go extinct per year. We're currently in the middle of a mass extinction era, mostly caused by human industrialization
Fun fact in case anyone didn't already know but the diesel engine was originally powered by whale oil but it's such a resilient engine that it was later fueled by what was once considered a waste byproduct of gasoline refinement.
My understanding is it can actually run on a pretty wide variety of fuels (in general; not every specific model can run on a wide variety).
I was always told kerosene and diesel, in that order, were the products of interest. Standard Oil didn’t know what to do with gasoline because it was considered too dangerous and explosive to transport, so they bankrolled the development of the Otto cycle to power their own equipment.
It was originally designed to run on peanut oil.
Whale oil was also used as a raw material in chemical industry for a lot of things where it was replaced by mineral oil too, e.g. in the production of tensides for washing powder, and not at least was also used for the production of margarine, as fat was rare in the early 20th century.
It was used in automatic transmission fluid until the 1970s.
And perfume as well, at least from what I remember from Anno
But that's made from ambergrease which is produced in the digestive system of a whale and can be found once in a while on the beach too.
That's the bases for the power system in the Dishonored video game series.
Similarly, ice was saved from massacre when refrigeration was invented.
There was a railway built to my town which had a big industry supplying ice to the large cities in the south. There was a long conveyor belt built into the lake leading to a large building stuffed with saw dust that kept ice well into the summer. It created a lot of winter work for the locals that dried up after refrigeration was invented. The railway lost its usefulness and also got torn up. And now the bay doesn't even freeze anymore.
And then the drive towards petroleum started. We traded one terrible earth destroying thing for another.
Horses were saved by cars too. Before ICE cars, horses were treated like shit and worked to death.