Ethanol, an alcohol fuel, is an important fuel for the operation of internal combustion engines that are used in cars, trucks, and other kinds of machinery.
Ethanol was first isolated from wine in approximately 1100 and was found to burn shortly thereafter. These early solutions distilled from wine-salt mixtures were referred to as aqua ardens (burning water) or aqua flamens (flaming water) and had such low alcohol content that they burned without producing noticeable heat. By the 13th century, the development of the cooling coil allowed the isolation of nearly pure ethanol by distillation.Seth C. Rasmussen. How Glass changed the World. The History and Chemistry of Glass from Antiquity to the 13th Century. Springer Briefs in Molecular Science: History of Chemistry; Rasmussen, S. C., Ed.; Springer: Heidelberg, 2012. Ethanol has been used for lamp oil and cooking, along with plant and animal oils.Hal Bernton, William Kovarik, Scott Sklar, The Forbidden Fuel: A History of Power Alcohol, Bison Press, 2010 Small alcohol stoves (also called "spirit lamps") were commonly used by travelers in the 17th century to warm food and themselves. Before the American Civil War many farmers in the United States had an alcohol still to turn crop waste into free lamp oil and stove fuel for the farmers' family use. Conflict over taxation was not unusual; one example was the Whiskey Rebellion in 1791. In 1826, Samuel Morey uses alcohol in the first American internal combustion engine prototype.Horst Hardenberg, Samuel Morey and his Atmospheric Engine (Warrendale, Pa.: Society of Automotive Engineers, Feb. 1992), SP922 In the 1830s, alcohol blends had replaced increasingly expensive whale oil in most parts of the country. It "easily took the lead as the illuminant" because it was "a decided improvement on other oils then in use." History of Light, pamphlet by the Welsbach Gas Co., Philadelphia Penn, 1909; on file in the Smithsonian collection of Advertising, Museum of American History, Washington, D.C. By 1860, thousands of distilleries churned out at least of alcohol per year for lighting. Camphene / alcohol blends (at $.50 per gallon) were cheaper than whale oil ($1.30 to $2.50 per gallon) and lard oil (90 cents per gallon). It was about the same price as coal oil, which was the product first marketed as "kerosene."Free Alcohol Law, Senate Finance Committee Hearings on HR 24816, Feb. 1907, Doc. No. 362, page 320; also Harold F. Williamson & Arnold R. Daum, The American Petroleum Industry, 1859-1899, The Age of Illumination (Evanston Ill NW U Press, 1959). In 1860, German inventor Nicolaus Otto uses ethyl alcohol as a fuel in an early internal combustion engine.Lyle Cummins, Internal Fire (Warrenton, Pa.: Society of Automotive Engineers, 1989) In 1862 and 1864, a tax on alcohol was passed in the U.S. to pay for the Civil War, increasing the price of ethanol to over $2.00 per gallon. A new product from petroleum, called kerosene, is taxed at 10 cents a gallon.Free alcohol hearings, U.S. Senate 1907, p. 320. Also, Free Alcohol Hearings, House Ways & Means Committee, 59th Congress, Feb.-Mar. 1906. In the 19th century, spirit lamps, pigeon lamps and others used a variety of blends of alcohol and oils in Europe. Alcohol powered not only automobiles and farm machinery but also a wide variety of lamps, stoves, heaters, laundry irons, hair curlers, coffee roasters and every conceivable household appliance. By one estimate, some 95,000 alcohol fueled stoves and 37,000 spirit lamps had been manufactured in Germany by 1902.Robert N. Tweedy, Industrial Alcohol (Dublin, Ireland: Plunkett House, 1917). By the 1890s, alcohol-fueled engines are starting to be used in farm machinery in Europe, making countries more fuel independent. Research at the Experimental Mechanical Laboratory of Paris and at the Deutsche Landwirtschaftliche Gesellschaft in Berlin in the 1890s helped pave the way for expanded use of alcohol fuel. By 1896, horseless carriages (cars) were showing up on roads in Europe and the United States. Because gasoline is so cheap and abundant, and also because ethanol is taxed at a high level, early US automobiles are adapted to gasoline from the beginning. Racing cars, on the other hand, usually used ethanol (and other alcohols) because more power could be developed in a smaller, lighter engine. Charles Edgar Duryea builds the first U.S. gasoline powered car but is aware of Samuel Morey's ethanol fueled experimental car of 1826. Henry Ford's first car, the Quadracycle, is also built that year. The car runs on gasoline, but Ford is aware of experiments with ethanol in Germany, and subsequently backs the lifting of the U.S. tax on industrial uses of ethanol. In 1899, the German government taxed petroleum imports and subsidized domestic ethanol. Kaiser Wilhelm II "was enraged at the Oil Trust of his country, and offered prizes to his subjects and cash assistance ... to adapt [alcohol] to use in the industries.""Launching of a Great Industry: The Making of Cheap Alcohol," The New York Times, Nov. 25, 1906, Section III p. 3. In 1901, the French ministry of agriculture offered prizes for the best alcohol-fueled engines and household appliances. In 1902, the Paris alcohol fuel exposition exhibited alcohol powered cars, farm machinery, lamps, stoves, heaters, laundry irons, hair curlers, coffee roasters, and every conceivable household appliance and agricultural engine powered by alcohol.Congress des Applications de L'Alcool Denature, 16 au 23 Dec., 1902, Automobile-Club de France, National Agricultural Library collection, Beltsville, Md. This exhibit traveled widely through Europe and was featured at the 1907 Jamestown, Virginia tricentennial celebrations. In 1906, the Free Alcohol bill is passed. The USA repeals the alcohol tax under Teddy Roosevelt. At 14 cents per US gallon, corn ethanol was cheaper than gasoline at 22 cents per US gallon. Bills pass that exempt farm stills from government control. In backing the bill, U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt says: "The Standard Oil Company has, largely by unfair or unlawful methods, crushed out home competition... It is highly desirable that an element of competition should be introduced by the passage of some such law as that which has already passed in the House, putting alcohol used in the arts and manufacturers upon the [tax] free list."Washington Post, May 5, 1906, p. 1. Starting in 1901, the discovery of new oil fields in Texas causes the price of gasoline to drop to between 18 and 22 cents per US gallon by 1906, undercutting farm ethanol markets In 1908, the Ford Model T is introduced. Early models had adjustable carburetors to run on ethanol with gasoline as an option. In 1909, the U.S. Geological Survey reports: "In regard to general cleanliness, such as absence of smoke and disagreeable odors, alcohol has many advantages over gasoline or kerosene as a fuel… The exhaust from an alcohol engine is never clouded with a black or grayish smoke." Overall, alcohol was "a more ideal fuel than gasoline."U.S. Dept. of Interior, Robert M. Strong, "Commercial Deductions from Comparisons of Gasoline and Alcohol Tests on Internal Combustion Engines," U.S. Geological Survey, Bulletin 392, (Washington: GPO, 1909); Also, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, C.E. Lucke, Columbia University, and S.M. Woodward, U.S.DA, "The Use of Alcohol and Gasoline in Farm Engines," U.S.D.A. Farmers Bulletin No. 277, (Washington: GPO, 1907). In 1914, the Free Alcohol bill is amended again to decrease the regulatory burden and encourage alcohol fuel production in the U.S. In 1917 Alexander Graham Bell says: "Alcohol makes a beautiful, clean and efficient fuel… Alcohol can be manufactured from corn stalks, and in fact from almost any vegetable matter capable of fermentation… We need never fear the exhaustion of our present fuel supplies so long as we can produce an annual crop of alcohol to any extent desired."Alexander Graham Bell, National Geographic, Vol. 31, Feb. 1917, p. 131. In 1918, Scientific American says it is "now definitely established that alcohol can be blended with gasoline to produce a suitable fuel …" Scientific American, "Alcohol as an Automobile Fuel," July 6, 1918 Another article notes that the Pasteur Institute of France found it could obtain of ethanol per ton of seaweed.Scientific American, "Seaweed as a Source of Alcohol," Nov. 9, 1918, p. 371. In 1919, Prohibition of beverage alcohol in the U.S. leads to suggestions for more ethanol use as an anti-knock blend with gasoline.Scientific American,"Shall the Corn Fields Run Our Cars: The possibilities of synthetic fuels and the source of the alcohol to make them," Sept. 18, 1920. Farm belt politicians are split on ethanol as a fuel. While distillers could have a new market for their alcohol, some thought that allowing any distillery to stay open would be a "bargain with the devil." In the 1920s and 1930s, Koolmotor, Benzalcool, Moltaco, Lattybentyl, Natelite, Alcool and Agrol are some of the gasoline-ethanol blends of fuels once found in Britain, Italy, Hungary, Sweden, South Africa, Brazil and the USA (respectively). In 1920, David White, chief geologist of US Geological Survey, estimates total oil remaining in the US at . "In making this estimate, which included both proved reserves and resources still remaining to be discovered, White conceded that it might well be in error by as much as 25 percent.""Asserts Americans face oil shortage," The New York Times, May 3, 1920, p. 22; also, Wallace B. Pratt, Vice President, Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), "Our Oil and Natural Gas Reserves," Chapter V, in ed. Leonard M. Fanning, Our Oil Resources, (New York: McGraw Hill Book Co. Inc., 1945), p. 125. In 1921, leaded gasoline is developed at the General Motors research laboratories in Dayton, Ohio. GM researcher Thomas Midgley Jr. still maintains: "The most direct route which we now know for converting energy from its source, the sun, into a material that is suitable for use in an internal combustion motor is through vegetation to alcohol… It now appears that alcohol is the only liquid from a direct vegetable source that combines relative cheapness with suitability (although other sources might be found)… Alcohol will stand very high initial compressions without knocking, and at high compressions is smooth and highly satisfactory.".Thomas Midgley Jr., "Our Liquid Fuel Reserves," unpublished paper to the Indiana Section of the Society of Automotive Engineers, 12 October 1921; also see Thomas Midgley Jr. and T. A. Boyd, "The Application of Chemistry to the Conservation of Motor Fuels," Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, September 1922. In 1921, British engineer Harry Ricardo patents racing fuels RD1 and RD2 (for Ricardo Discol) that contained methanol and ethanol, acetone and small amounts of water. These were widely used on race tracks throughout Europe and the US in the 1920s and 30s. In 1923 leaded gasoline is marketed, and by 1924 GM and Standard Oil Co. form the Ethyl Corp. Ethyl claims it has "solved" the problem of engine knock, but public health scientists (e.g. Alice Hamilton of Harvard University) are appalled at the prospects for lead poisoning and insist that alternatives such as ethanol blends are available.Bill Kovarik, "Charles F. Kettering and the Development of Tetraethyl Lead in the Context of Technological Alternatives," Society of Automotive Engineers, Fuels & Lubricants Division, Historical Colloquium, Baltimore, Md. Oct. 17, 1994.