History of Energy Resources and Utilization

Information is arranged in chronological order within each topic.  The tables following each topic include links to relevant Wikipedia articles.  This page will be updated often, feel free to suggest any additions or corrections.

| General | Statistics | Prime Movers | Transportation | Artificial Illumination | Wood and Biomass | Coal | Petroleum | Electricity | Electric Storage | Natural Gas | Nuclear Energy | Hydropower | Geothermal | Solar | Wind | Green New Deal | District Heating | Energy in Rochester |

General References
Energy Flow Charts:  Charting the Complex Relationships among Energy, Water, and Carbon (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

Institute for Energy Research

Sustainable Energy in America, Business Council for Sustainable Energy

Clean Energy Wire Journalism for the energy transition

Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis

History of the Environmental Movement

1884 Heating by artificial means, by James Keith

1917 The Evolution of Cooking and Heating, by H.H. Manchester

1924 Civilization and climate, by Ellsworth Huntington, Third Edition

1960 Energy in the American economy, 1850-1975; an economic study of its history and prospects, by Sam H Schurr; Bruce Carlton Netschert; Resources for the Future.

2007 Powering The Past: A Look Back, Smithsonian Institution

2008 The mantra of efficiency: from waterwheel to social control, by Jennifer Karns Alexander

2013 The History of Energy Efficiency, Alliance Commission on National Energy Efficiency Policy, 2013

2014 Power on the Hudson: Storm King Mountain and the emergence of modern American environmentalism, by Robert Lifset

2015 David Brower: The Making of the Environmental Movement

2018 Energy: A Human History, by by Richard Rhodes

2019 Scientists warned the US president about global warming 50 years ago today, The Guardian, November 15, 2005

2023 ‘We Put in Air Conditionin’, Stayed Year-Round, and Ruined America’, Politico, September 12, 2023

Statistics
US Energy Information Administration

BP Statistical Review of World Energy,

Global Energy Statistical Yearbook 2019

International Energy Agency (IEA)

1970 The statistical history of the United States, from colonial times to the present, by Ben J. Wattenberg, Basic Books, 1970

Global Wind Energy Council | Statistics |

Each Country's Share of CO2 Emissions  (Union of Concerned Scientists).  Includes per capita emissions

The World Bank | Energy Information and Statistics

Lazard Global Energy and Storage Costs 

SDG7: Data and Projections   

Prime Movers
1824 A Descriptive History of the Steam Engine, by Robert Stuart

1826 History of the Steam Engine: From Its First Invention to the Present Time, by Elijah Galloway

1862 History of the steam engine, from the second century before the Christian era to the time of the Great Exhibition, by Robert Wallace

1878 A History of the Growth of the Steam-engine, by Robert Henry Thurston

1904 The steam turbine, by Robert Morrison Neilson

1979 A history of industrial power in the United States, 1780-1930, by Lewis C. Hunter
Volume 2: Steam Power

1979 A history of industrial power in the United States, 1780-1930, by Lewis C. Hunter
Volume 3: The Transmission of Power

Transportation
1852 Colton's traveler and tourist's guide-book through the United States of America and the Canadas : containing the routes and distances of the great lines of travel by railroads, canals, stageroads, and steamboats : together with descriptions of the several states and the principal cities, towns, and villages in each : accompanied with a large and accurate map.

1889 The Electric Railway, by Fred H. Whipple

1912 Genesis of Steamboating on Western Rivers: With a Register of Officers on the Upper Mississippi, 1823-70, by
George Byron Merrick, William R. Tibbals | also here |

1915 A history of travel in America, showing the development of travel and transportation from the crude methods of the canoe and the dog-sled to the highly organized railway systems of the present, together with a narrative of the human experiences and changing social conditions that accompanied this economic conquest of the continent, Volume 1, by Seymour Dunbar | Volume 2 | Volume 3 | Volume 4 |

1916 The New York Central railroad, 1831-1915

1919 The Railroad Builders: A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, by John Moody

1921 America's greatest railroad system--the New York Central, by Charles Frederick Carter

1921 The greatest highway in the world; historical, industrial and descriptive information of the towns, cities and country passed through between New York and Chicago via the New York Central Lines

1926 The beginnings of the New York Central Railroad; a history, by Frank Walker Stevens.

1932 "Early Railroads of New York," by Edward Hungerford, New York History 13(1):75-89 (January, 1932)

1938 Men and iron; the history of New York Central, by Edward Hungerford.

1951 The transportation revolution, 1815-1860, by George Rogers Taylor.

1987 Building the American Highway System: Engineers as Policy Makers, by Bruce E. Seely

1994 Down the asphalt path : the automobile and the American city, by Clay McShane. | also here | another copy |

1994 Taking charge:  The Electric Automobile in America, by Michael B. Schiffer

2010 "The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways: The Road to Success?," by Elisheva Blas, The History Teacher 44(1):147-142 (November, 2010)

Quarterly Plug-In EV Sales Scorecard, by InsideEVs

Artificial Illumination
1856 The Chemistry of Artificial Light: Including the History of Wax, Tallow , and Sperm Candles, and the Manufacture of Gas ... and a Descriptive Sketch of Lamps and Other Apparatus. [A Separate Issue of Part of “Practical Chemistry” by George Gore, M. Sparling and J. Scoffern.]

1860 Observations upon artificial light, by A. H. Renton

1914 The Elementary Principles of Illumination and Artificial Lighting, by Arthur Blok

1920 Artificial Light: Its Influence Upon Civilization, by Matthew Luckiesh

1951 "Artificial Lighting in America:  1830-1860," by C. Malcolm Watkins, Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution

1995 Disenchanted Night:  The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century, by Wolfgang Schivelbusch

2019 Brilliant:  The Evolution of Artificial Light, by Jane Brox

2019 American Lucifers:  The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750-1865, by Jeremy Zallen | dissertation | book review |

Wood and Biomass
1618 Holzsparkunst, by Franz Kessler; translated into French the following year as Espargne-Bois [Saving Fuel, first book written on energy conservation, has never been translated into English.]

1854 On the history and art of warming and ventilating rooms and buildings, Volume 1, by Robert Meikleham | Volume 2 |

1884 Report on the forests of North America, exclusive of Mexico, by Charles Sprague Sargent, Tenth Census
Page 490:  Map of the United States showing the character of fuel used in the different sections of the settled portion of the country

1942 Fuel Wood Used in the United States 1630-1930. February 1943

1970 "The Mystery of Fuel Wood Marketing In the United States," by Arthur H. Cole, Business History Review, 44(3):339-359 (October 1970)

1991 A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization, by John Perlin | Google books | borrow from Internet Archive |

2018 Book: John Perlin’s “A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization” x

2025 Firewood in the American Economy: 1700 to 2010, by Nicholas Z. Muller, June 2025  | pdf |

Coal
1661 Fumifugium, by John Evelyn

1850 Gas Light from Bituminous Coal by Battin, Dungan & Company, Philadelphia.

1865 The Coal Question (Revised Edition) by William Stanley Jevons

1866 Special Report on Coal: Showing Its Distribution, Classification and Cost Delivered Over Different Routes to Various Points in the State of New York, and the Principal Cities on the Atlantic Coast, by Sylvanos H. Sweet

1893 Testimony taken before the special Senate committee relative to the coal monopoly.

1911 The natural history of coal, by E. A. Newell Arber, Cambridge

1918 The New York state canals; the canal as a carrier of coal

1923 Smoke Abatement, by Osborn Monnett

1944 Pennsylvania's Mineral Heritage: The Commonwealth at the Economic Crossroads of Her Industrial Development

1951 Coal by W. H. B. Court

1951 "History and Development of the Anthracite Industry," by Robert D. Billinger. Pennsylvania Department of Internal Affairs Bulletin 19(3):3-27

1954 Pennsylvania's Coal Industry, by Robert D Billinger

1962 "Smoke smog & health in early Pittsburgh," by John Duffy, Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 45(2):93-106 (June 1962)

1971 "Coal Trains North: The Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad Company," by Robert R. Rothfus, The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 54(3):264-273 (July, 1971)   The Rochester and Pittsburgh was one of several railroads competing for the coal trade from western Pennsylvania to the Great Lakes during the 1880's.

1977 "The Wilsonians as War Managers:  Coal and the 1917-18 Winter Crisis," by James P. Johnson, Prologue 7:193-208 (Winter, 1977) | pdf |

1977 The coal industry in America : a bibliography and guide to studies, by Robert F. Munn

1978  Philadelphia's first fuel crisis : Jacob Cist and the developing market for Pennsylvania anthracite, by Howard Benjamin Powell

2001 The Subterranean Forest: Energy Systems and the Industrial Revolution, by Rolf Peter Sieferle,  Translated from the German original by Michael P. Osman. Cambridge: The White Horse Press, 2001.

2020 Henry Clay Frick and the Golden Age of Coal and Coke, 1870-1920, by Cassandra Vivian

Petroleum
1895 Petroleum: Its History, Origin, Occurrence, Production, Physical and Chemical Constitution, Technology, Examination and Uses; Together with the Occurrences and Uses of Natural Gas, by Hans Hoefer

1895 One Hundred Years of American Commerce
Pages 204-214: Chapter XXXI. Petroleum:  Its Production and Products, by Henry G. Folger, Jr., Standard Oil Company

1903 The rise and progress of the Standard Oil Company, by Gilbert Holland Montague

1904 The history of the Standard Oil Company, Volume 1,  by Ida Tarbell | Volume 2 |

1916 The American petroleum industry by Bacon, Raymond Foss Bacon, Hamor, William Allen Hamor, McGraw Hill  | Volume 1 | Volume 2 | 

1919 The Shell that Hit Germany Hardest, by P. G. A. Smith

1926 The Oil War, by Anton Mohr

1943 Big Inch Pipelines of WW II

1959 The American Petroleum Industry: The Age of Illumination, 1859—1899, by Harold F. Williamson and Arnold R. Daum, Evanston,

1961 Americans in Sumatra, by James W. Gould
Pages  41-80:  Black Gold - The History of American Enterprise in Indonesian Oil Development

1963 The chronological history of the petroleum and natural gas industries, by James A. Clark

1965 The American Petroleum Industry: The Age of Energy, 1900—1959, Harold F. Williamson, Ralph L. Andreano, Arnold R. Daum, and Gilbert C. Kiose, Evanston

1976  The seven sisters : the great oil companies and the world they shaped, by Anthony Sampson

1990 The Battle for oil : the economics and politics of international corporate conflict over petroleum, 1860-1930, by A A Fursenko, translated by Gregory L Freeze

1991 The Prize:  The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power by Daniel Yergin.  This was also turned into a PBS television series that will be shown in class. | also here | and here | The Prize videos on Youtube |

2000 Petrolia: the landscape of America's first oil boom, by Brian Black

2000 The Big Inch and Little Big Inch Pipelines, The Most Amazing Government-Industry Cooperation Ever Achieved, Texas Eastern Transmission Corp., May 2000.

2001 "Naval Innovation:  From Coal to Oil," by Erik J. Dahl, Joint Force Quarterly 27:50-56 (Winter 2000-2001)

2017 "The Most Important Scientist You’ve Never Heard Of," by Lucas Reilly, Mental Floss (May 17, 2017)
Proving that lead in gasoline is a bad thing.

2018 The Big Inch: Fueling America’s WWII War Effort

Electricity
1887 The Electric Motor and Its Applications, by Thomas Commerford Martin

1894 The Inventions Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla by Thomas Commerford Martin

1895 A History of Electricity: (The Intellectual Rise in Electricity) from antiquity to Benjamin Franklin..by Park Benjamin

1910 Edison:  His Life and Inventions, Volume 1, by Frank Lewis Dyer and by Thomas Commerford Martin | Volume 2 |

1921 A superpower system for the region between Boston and Washington, by William Spencer Murray

1925 Superpower, its genesis and future, by William Spencer Murray

1925 Report of the Giant Power Survey Board to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, February 1925

1925 "Giant power : large scale electrical development as a social factor," by Moris Llewllyn Cooke, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 118(1) (March 1925)

1926 Report of the Giant power board to the Governor of Pennsylvania., December 7, 1926

1957 The R.G.&.E. Story, A history of Rochester Gas and Electric Company of Rochester, NY.

1983 Networks of power: electrification in Western society, 1880-1930, by Thomas Parke Hughes

1984 "Sources of Energy in Rochester’s History," by Rod Baily, Rochester History 46 (3 & 4):1-24 (July & October, 1984)

1986 Power struggle: the hundred-year war over electricityby Richard Rudolph and Scott Ridley

1992 The Electrification of Russia, 1880-1926, by Jonathan Coopersmith

1998 "The Development of Gas & Electricity in Rochester," by Ruth Rosenberg-Naparsteck, Rochester History 60(4):1-24 (Fall, 1998)

2013 The age of Edison : electric light and the invention of modern America, by Ernest Freeberg

2018 "Shedding New Light on Rural Electrification: The Neglected Story of Successful Efforts to Power Up Farms in the 1920s and 1930s," by Richard Hirsh, Agricultural History 92(3):296-327 (Summer 2018)

Electric Storage
1854 "The First Locomotive That Ever Made a Successful Trip with Galvanic Power," American Polytechnic Journal 4(5):257-264 (November 1854)

1972 "The Page Locomotive: Federal Sponsorship of Invention in Mid-19th-Century America," by Robert C. Post, Technology and Culture 13(2):140-269 (April 1972)

1976 Physics, Patents, and Politics: A Biography of Charles Grafton Page, by Robert C. Post

2014 Energy Storage, International Energy Agency

Natural Gas
1886 A Brief History of Natural Gas: Its Advantages, Use, Supply, and economy as a fuel to manufacturers.

1895 Petroleum: Its History, Origin, Occurrence, Production, Physical and Chemical Constitution, Technology, Examination and Uses; Together with the Occurrences and Uses of Natural Gas, by Hans Hoefer

1918 Handbook of Natural Gas, by Henry Palmer Westcott | Third Edition (1920) |

1927 A brief history of the natural gas industry, by H C Zwetsch
Page 6:  Shortly after the Civil War a farmer by the name of Dean and a banker by the name of Wellman, of Friendship, N. Y., undertook the piping of Natural Gas from East Bloomfield, N. Y., to the City of Rochester, N. Y., a distance of approximately 20 miles. A wooden pipe line made of pumplogs was laid, the connections were wrapped with army blankets and then bound with iron bands and tarred. The gas taken by this wooden pipe line was brought down to a point about St. Paul Street on East Main Street, Rochester, and lighted. Shortly thereafter, the line was blown up and it was discovered by one of the workmen that someone who was hostile to the gas being taken to Rochester had thrown a pair of old overalls into the pipe line at one of the connections to stop the flow of gas. The heavy pressure back of this obstruction caused the pipe to buckle along the line, resulting in the line being blown up and ruined, which ended the Natural Gas supply to Rochester for all time. The field was afterwards discovered to be a very shallow one.

1957 The R.G.&.E. Story, A history of Rochester Gas and Electric Company of Rochester, NY.

1963 The chronological history of the petroleum and natural gas industries, by James A. Clark

1976 The Natural Gas Story Investigation, U.S. Congress

1984 "Sources of Energy in Rochester’s History," by Rod Baily, Rochester History 46 (3 & 4):1-24 (July & October, 1984)

1994 Facts about Offshore Natural Gas

1998 "The Development of Gas & Electricity in Rochester," by Ruth Rosenberg-Naparsteck, Rochester History 60(4):1-24 (Fall, 1998)

Nuclear Energy
1970 Metropolitan siting of nuclear power plants / presented by Louis H. Roddis, Jr.  U.S. Atomic Energy Commission

1987 "Nuclear Power Development: history and outlook," IAEA Bulletin (March 1987)

1989 Atoms for Peace and War, 1953-1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission by Richard G. Hewlett, Jack M. Holl, California, 1989

2009 "Atoms for Peace" in Pennsylvania, by Willis L. Shirk Jr., Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine, Volume XXXV, Number 2 - Spring 2009

2013 History of Nuclear Power, by R. J. Duffy

2017 Nuclear Power, by Paul A. Breeze

Hydropower
1979 A history of industrial power in the United States, 1780-1930, by Lewis C. Hunter
Volume 1: Waterpower in the Century of the Steam Engine

1983 Stronger Than A Hundred Men:  a history of the vertical water wheel, by Terry S. Reynolds

Geothermal
1976 Geothermal resources exploration & exploitation : a bibliography.

A History of Geothermal Energy in America

Solar Energy
1976 Solar Energy:  a bibliography

1980 A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Energy, by John Perlin with Ken Butti

1999 From Space to Earth:  The Story of Solar Electricity, by John Perlin

2013 Let it Shine: 6000 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology, by John Perlin

Solar Energy Industries Association

American Solar Energy Society

New York Unified Solar Permit

Wind
Grand challenges in the science of wind energy

2019 A Wind Turbine Farm The Size Of Delaware Could Power The Entire United States, by Michael Barnard [ or not, his basic assumption about wind turbine footprints is completely wrong ]
The average wind turbine installed in the US in 2018 was 2.6 megawatts (MW) in capacity. Using this average size as our baseline, we would need about 1.26 million of them.
That’s a lot, of course. The US consumes a great deal of energy every year.
But each wind turbine only takes up about a quarter acre of land at the base, so that’s only about 470 square miles of land that would actually have a wind turbine on it.

WINDExchange

American Wind Energy Association

New York State Article 10 Energy Siting Process

Green New Deal
2019 Parsing the Green New Deal

2019 New York City's Climate Mobilization Act

2019 Global Status of Carbon Capture and Storage, from Global CCS Institute

2020 Making Progress Happen, State of the State Address by Governor Andew M. Cuomo, January 8, 2020
Part 2 - Combat climate change and grow New York's Green Economy
Positioning  New  York  to  become  the  hub  of  the nation’s rapidly growing offshore wind industry, with nearly 2,000 megawatts already in development toward the State’s nation-leading goal of 9,000 megawatts by 2035
Part 3 - Expand Renewable Energy Power in New York to Meet Zero-Carbon Emissions by 2040

100% Wind, Water, and Solar (WWS) All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for Countries, States, Cities, and Towns, by Mark Z. Jacobson

Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar, by Christopher T. M. Clack, Staffan A. Qvist, Jay Apt, Morgan Bazilian, Adam R. Brandt, Ken Caldeira, Steven J. Davis, Victor Diakov, Mark A. Handschy, Paul D. H. Hines, Paulina Jaramillo, Daniel M. Kammen, Jane C. S. Long, M. Granger Morgan, Adam Reed, Varun Sivaram, James Sweeney, George R. Tynan, David G. Victor, John P. Weyant, and Jay F. Whitacre, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (26) 6722-6727; first published June 19, 2017

Fossil Gas Has No Future in Low-Carbon Buildings, from the Rocky Mountain Institute

Project Drawdown