The message had been sent. Edwin Drake's last financial backer had finally lost patience.

Pay off your debts, give up and come home.

Drake had been hoping to find rock oil, a brownish crude that sometimes bubbled

near the surface of western Pennsylvania. He planned to refine it into kerosene for lamps,

a substitute for the increasingly expensive whale oil.

There would also be less useful by-products such as gasoline, but if he couldn't find a buyer for

that, he could always pour it away. The message had been sent, but Drake had not yet received it,

when his drill bit punctured an underground reservoir full of crude oil under pressure.

From 69 feet beneath the surface, the oil began to rise. It was the 27th August, 1859.

The whales had been saved, and the world was about to change. Just a few miles south, and a few years

later came a hint of what lay in store. In 1864, when oil was struck at Pit Hole, Pennsylvania,

there were not 50 inhabitants within half a dozen miles, according to the New York Times.

A year later, Pit Hole had at least 10,000 inhabitants, 50 hotels, one of the country's busiest

post offices, two telegraph stations, and dozens of brothels. A few men made fortunes,

but a real economy is complex and self-sustaining. Pit Hole was neither. Within another year, it was gone.

Pit Hole's oil boom didn't last, but are thirst for the fuel, grew, and grew. The modern economy

is drenched in oil. It's the source of more than a third of the world's energy. That's more than

coal. It's also more than twice as much as nuclear, hydroelectric, and renewable energy sources combined.

Oil and gas together provide a quarter of our electricity, and the raw material for most plastics.

Then there's transport. Edwin Drake may have questioned who would buy gasoline,

but the internal combustion engine was about to give him an answer. From cars to trucks, cargo ships

to jet planes, oil-derived fuel still moves us, and stuff, around. No wonder the price of oil is

...