Natural gas, of the sort many people use in their homes, and many countries used throughout their infrastructural

stack for various sorts of energy needs, perhaps especially heating purposes, but also for cooking

stoves as a vehicle fuel and as part of the manufacturing process for substances like plastic, has been used by

humans as a source of energy since at least 500 BC based on recorded evidence of its use,

though perhaps as early as 1,000 BC based on somewhat flimsier evidence. In either case, though, the earliest recorded

use of this naturally occurring gas was in China, where digging and drilling for saltwater

solutions used to brine food led to the discovery of underground pockets of gas, which was then in some cases

transported using a clever system of pipes made from bamboo, either to a central location

where it could then be used to prepare some types of food, or in at least one case,

to a sort of brine processing plant,

where the gas could be used to power a fire that then helped those running this plant to boil

that brine and extract salt from it. Periodic but sparse use of this type of gas continued in China, and likely,

elsewhere around the world as well, though there's little or no recorded evidence of this,

so it's difficult to say where and when, and for what purposes, if that is indeed the case.

But that continued to be the case until the late 1700s, when some companies in Britain

began to provide natural gas derived from coal to cities for the purpose of powering street lamps,

and then eventually powering lamps inside the home as well. That same model of

providing natural gas to city infrastructure and homes was replicated in the United States

by the early 1800s. Baltimore was the first city to power public lamps with manufactured gas.

But the first natural gas well was dug in the United States in 1821 in New York.

And about 15 years later, there was enough well and pipe-based infrastructure in place

to provide a sort of natural gas as a utility service

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