Coal and Petroleum: Vital Resources Long Ago

We are once again reminded of the great importance and value of coal, petroleum and electricity by the recent energy shortage. Just like the air, they seem invisible and therefore neglected, but they have been an indispensable part of our daily life since ancient times. In the country with the world’s largest coal reserves, it is thought that people started using  coal over 7,000 years ago in China. It was the use of coal that changed Chinese history. Besides smelting, it burns at  the high temperatures needed to make porcelain,  in the 6th century it started to fuel China’s path toward becoming "the country of porcelain."Wedgwood, the manufacturer of fine china, luxury porcelain and accessories in the English city of Stoke on Trent, might not be what it is today without Josiah Wedgwood’s cooperation with James Watt by introducing the Watt steam engine to his family business, thus starting a new era of industrialization in the of porcelain business, and enabling Europe to break the Chinese monopoly in this area with the help of technology.The earliest recorded  case of vapor from petroleum burning on a lake surface  was more than 3,000 years ago. In the Song dynasty (around 1,000 years ago), petroleum was used as the raw material for making attacking weapons, produced by specially founded workshops. China also invented probably the world’s earliest flame throwers to equip the army.The use of petroleum was recorded in detail in two technological encyclopedia works a few hundred years ago. In May 2021, the two ancient Chinese scientists who wrote the works  were among the eight Chinese names approved by the International Astronomical Union to have lunar geological features named after them around the area where China’s moon lander the Chang’e-5 touched down in 2020.