How Did We Find Out About Oil
Asimov traces oil’s journey from ancient origins and early uses to modern industry, revealing its transformative power, technological ingenuity, societal impact, and cautionary lessons for humanity.
When Isaac Asimov turned his attention to the subject of oil, he did not begin with drilling rigs or tankers. He began, as he always did, with the larger story of nature itself. Oil, after all, was not invented by human beings. It was created slowly, invisibly, and inexorably over hundreds of millions of years. The book How Did We Find Out About Oil is written for younger readers, but like much of Asimov’s science writing, it wears no unnecessary simplifications. It is direct, precise, and rooted in his conviction that clarity is kindness.
The story opens not in a laboratory but in the prehistoric seas. Tiny plants and animals lived, died, and sank into the mud. Pressure and heat acted on their remains until chemical bonds reshaped them into something new: hydrocarbons. This is the first “mini story” in the book, and it is a story that belongs more to the Earth than to humanity. It is the reminder that what we call “crude oil” is, in fact, bottled sunshine—energy trapped from ancient photosynthesis, sealed away under rock until we stumbled upon it.
The next movement of the story shifts to the first human encounters. People did not discover oil in laboratories but at seeps, where sticky black tar oozed out of the ground. Asimov points to Mesopotamia, where people gathered bitumen for waterproofing their boats, and to Egypt, where similar tar was used in mummification. These are the earliest chapters of oil in civilization: humble, local, and practical. No one then could imagine oil lighting entire cities or powering machines across continents. To them, it was simply one more natural substance, useful in patching, sealing, and sometimes in medicine.
Centuries passed. The world grew, but oil remained a background presence. The next mini story comes in the 19th century, when the hunger for light grew urgent. Whale oil, once the standard for lamps, grew scarce and costly as whales were hunted nearly to extinction. Here, Asimov sees the characteristic pivot point of human ingenuity. A problem—scarcity of light—demanded a solution. And in the swamps and hills of Pennsylvania, a new solution was forced upon the world: petroleum could be refined into kerosene.
The famous drilling of Edwin Drake’s well in 1859 becomes, in Asimov’s telling, not just an engineering feat but a turning point in history. For the first time, oil was not just gathered when it appeared, but sought after deliberately, drawn out of the earth in quantities that astonished onlookers. The gushers of black crude seemed miraculous, even terrifying. The story of oil had entered the modern age.
Asimov then carefully explains how crude oil is not uniform but a mixture of many different molecules. This is another mini story: the story of distillation. Crude, when heated, separates into layers—lighter vapors rising first, heavier fractions condensing later. The names are simple enough—gasoline, kerosene, diesel, lubricating oil, waxes, and residues—but each had a role to play in reshaping society. The lamp oil that first created the demand for drilling would, in time, become a minor by-product compared to gasoline, which roared to dominance once the automobile arrived.
The 20th century is described almost as the age of oil itself. Internal combustion engines demanded a constant flow of fuel. Aircraft, ships, trucks, and private cars all ran on the same essential lifeblood. Oil no longer illuminated just houses—it illuminated entire civilizations, indirectly, by energizing their factories, their transports, and their cities. Asimov, with his typical precision, does not dwell on romance but on cause and effect: cheap, concentrated energy enabled more work, more travel, and more growth than any earlier society had known.
Yet he is never one to overlook the shadows in a bright tale. The next mini story is about the costs. Oil spills blackened waters. Cities choked on smoke and fumes. The very reliance on petroleum made nations entangle themselves in competition for oil-rich lands. And beneath it all was a sober truth: oil is finite. It took millions of years to form, but only a few centuries to consume. Even in a book meant for the young, Asimov does not shy away from telling his readers that the wells will not last forever.
The final chapters of the book return to the scientific spirit. How did we find out about oil? By watching, experimenting, refining, and questioning. The same habits that let people notice tar seeping from the earth also let chemists discover the many uses of hydrocarbons. The same curiosity that drove Drake to drill a well drives engineers to push rigs deeper offshore, and chemists to turn petroleum into plastics and medicines. But Asimov’s underlying message is unmistakable: knowledge gives us power, but it also gives us responsibility. We must look to the future, to new sources of energy, and to wiser ways of living.
The book is also notable for its balance. Asimov never romanticizes oil as a savior of mankind, nor does he demonize it as a curse. He shows its power, its versatility, and its role in modernity, while also pointing to pollution, accidents, and finiteness. This calm, almost mathematical weighing of the evidence is part of what makes his science writing enduring. He does not preach. He explains.
For readers already familiar with Asimov’s works—his essays, his histories, and his science guides—How Did We Find Out About Oil fits snugly into the pattern of the How Did We Find Out series. Each volume isolates one element of human knowledge and traces it back to its beginning. It is a method both humble and grand. Humble, because it starts small, with tar in ancient boats. Grand, because it ends with an entire civilization powered by what once seemed a nuisance.
In this sense, the book is not really about oil at all. It is about curiosity. Oil becomes the thread by which Asimov demonstrates how human beings learn: from accident to experiment, from experiment to industry, from industry to reflection. To understand this story is to understand not only what oil is but how knowledge itself grows.
That is why the book still reads as fresh and engaging. The details of drilling may change; the challenges of energy may shift toward solar, wind, or nuclear power. But the essential story of discovery remains the same.
