Fossil fuels are hydrocarbon-containing materials of biological origin, like coal, oil, and natural gas, that can be burned for energy. No single person discovered these materials, as their existence and utility have been known for millennia, but their transformation into the world’s primary energy source is a story of gradual recognition and industrial innovation. The answer to who “discovered” fossil fuels depends on whether one means the first to use them, the first to understand their nature, or the first to exploit them commercially.
Early Use of Bitumen and Coal
The earliest uses of what we now call fossil fuels were opportunistic, focusing on naturally occurring seeps and outcroppings. This involved bitumen, a tar-like form of petroleum that naturally oozed to the surface in the Middle East. As early as 4000 BCE, civilizations in ancient Mesopotamia, particularly the Sumerians and Babylonians, relied heavily on this substance for construction and waterproofing.
They used bitumen as mortar for brickwork, notably in the construction of ziggurats and the famed Ishtar Gate of Babylon. Its sticky, water-resistant properties also made it indispensable for caulking reed boats used on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Separately, the use of coal emerged in different parts of the world, long before the Industrial Revolution made it central to global power.
In China, systematic coal exploitation for fuel dates back to the Han Dynasty, though knowledge of its use existed even earlier. The Romans also began utilizing coal in Britain for heating and metalworking as early as the 2nd century CE, using surface deposits. These early uses established the utility of these materials as simple, localized resources, but their vast potential remained unrecognized.
Scientific Classification and Origin Theories
The true intellectual discovery of fossil fuels came with the understanding of their geological origin. Before the 19th century, the origin of coal and petroleum was largely a mystery, but the scientific work of the Enlightenment began to classify them as ancient organic matter. The German chemist Caspar Neumann recorded the first known use of the term “fossil fuel” in 1759, linking these burnable substances to materials dug from the earth.
The intellectual framework needed to understand the millions of years required for fossil fuel formation was established by geologists like James Hutton and Charles Lyell. Lyell’s doctrine of Uniformitarianism argued that the Earth’s features were shaped by slow, continuous processes over vast stretches of time, a concept known as “deep time.” This framework made the conversion of massive ancient forests into coal plausible.
The link between coal and ancient plant life became concrete in the 19th century, with the formal classification of the coal-bearing strata. The term “Carboniferous period” was formalized by English geologists William Conybeare and William Phillips in the 1820s to describe the rock layers holding Europe’s coal.
Further microscopic analysis in 1833 confirmed the “vegetable nature” of coal, proving it originated from compressed and chemically altered plant matter. This scientific classification transformed coal from a mere rock that burns into a recognized geological resource.
The Birth of the Modern Petroleum Industry
While coal was widely used, petroleum remained a marginal product until a commercial application was found to replace whale oil for lighting. The transition began with New York lawyer George Bissell, who recognized the potential of “rock oil” seeping from the ground in Pennsylvania. In 1855, Bissell commissioned a Yale chemist, Benjamin Silliman Jr., to analyze the crude oil.
Silliman’s report confirmed that the crude oil could be fractionally distilled into several valuable products, including a cheap, bright-burning lamp oil called kerosene. This provided the commercial blueprint for a new industry, but a method for large-scale extraction was still needed. Bissell and his partners formed the Seneca Oil Company and hired Edwin L. Drake, a former railroad conductor, to manage the drilling operation near Titusville, Pennsylvania.
Drake’s achievement was not discovering oil—which was already known in the area—but developing the successful method for its industrial extraction. In 1859, Drake innovated by driving a cast-iron pipe down to the bedrock to prevent the well walls from collapsing due to water seepage, a technique borrowed from salt-well drilling.
On August 27, 1859, Drake struck oil at a depth of 69.5 feet, successfully drilling the first well explicitly intended for commercial production. This act launched the modern petroleum industry, transforming oil from a medicinal curiosity into a globally traded commodity.