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First Natural Gas Well Drilled
In Fredonia, New York William Hart observed gas bubbles rising in a creek which inspired him to drill a well in to the ground in search of natural gas. -
Coal Becomes Most Common Energy Source For Trains
The first commercially built and practical train, Tom Thumb, was built in America and ran on coal. -
Windmills Become Popular For Pumping Water
This form of water-pumping through windmills was extremely useful for those settling out west and was very helpful in the process of creating railroads. -
Birth of the Modern Oil Industry
Salt that was trapped underneath the earth's surface gradually kept pushing the ground up until it errupted with "black gold" that took 9 days to control. This lead to the invention of the 'Christmas Tree' that is used to control the stream of the errupting oil. -
First Commercial Scale Geothermal Electric Plants in the US
A huge geothermal electric plant was built at The Geysers dry steam field, in northern California. -
Solar One
Built in Dagget, California is the first test of a large scale thermal solar tower. The tower consentrates the sun's energy to produce heat and run a generator. -
Largest Nuclear Accident Ever
An accident that was caused by a sudden surge of power in Chernobyl, Ukraine ruined the reactor and released excessive amounts of radioacctive material in to the environment. -
EV1 Electric Car Is Made Available to the Public
Engineers have now started looking at different ways to give cars energy sinc we know that fossil fuels are a limited resource. They have now come up with an electric car that you can charge. -
First Commercial Cellulosic Ethanol Plant Goes Into Production
The first Commercial Cellulosic Plant is begining to be built in Wyoming. It is a small scale waste wood commercial facility, the first in the United States. -
BP Oil Spill
The BP oil spill off the coast of Louisiana was the biggest oil spill in the history of the U.S. The spill ended up killing 11 crew memebers and seriously damaged the life of the sea environment. -
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