01-31-2014, 10:48 PM
According to a documentary I watched a while ago, back in the day when Edison was trying to promote electric lights and electrification for home use, gasoline was a waste product of refining oil into kerosene (which was the primary method of home lighting). They didn't know what to do with the gasoline and dumped tons and tons of it into fields. Eventually, Rockefeller (who was afraid of losing his kerosene profits to electric) saw the potential to use gasoline for internal combustion engines.