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[[File:652px-First_Oil_Well.jpg|thumbnail|175px|Edwin Drake and his oil well]]
There was no one "first discover" of oil - at least that history was around to record. Oil was known in antiquity when it was used to heal wounds. But by the middle of the 19th century methods for collecting oil from the ground had not changed for thousands of years. It was either harvested in a pail or sopped up with rags and wrung out by hand over barrels.<ref>American Chemical Society, “The Development of the Pennsylvania Oil Industry,” 2009.</ref>
