ABSTRACT
The assumption of energy abundance in the earlier transition shaped political and economic attitudes that are strikingly different from those generated by assumptions of energy shortages. Particular interest to those who seek to analyze the coming transition from petroleum to alternative sources of energy is the history of the transition from coal to oil in the early part of the twentieth century. The growing use of fuel oil in the first decades of the twentieth century was an important transitional phase in the decline of "King Coal" and the rise of its successor. The transition from coal to oil began only decades after coal had replaced wood as the primary source of energy in the United States. The transformation of the petroleum industry from the production of kerosene to the production of fuel oil, and to gasoline was at the heart of the transition from coal to oil.
