ABSTRACT
Gasification is a relatively old technology. Coal gasification was invented in 1792 and was
extensively used to produce town gas in the 19th century, but was quite expensive. For this reason,
people in North America started using whale oil for illumination, driving the whale population
nearly to extinction. In 1846, Dr. Abraham Gesner, a native of Nova Scotia, Canada, invented a
process for extracting lighting oil from solid fuels using pyrolysis. He called this oil kerosene (from
the Greek word for wax and oil). In 1849, he developed a process for extracting kerosene from oil,
just discovered in the U.S.A. and Canada, saving the whales from extinction.
