A Letter to Henry Cavendish (10 October 1731 – 24 February 1810)
Dear Henry,
In 1776, gas was mostly a rumor trapped inside swamps, coal seams, and the imaginations of curious scientists.
America did not yet run on petroleum, pipelines, combustion engines, or sprawling interstate systems humming with millions of vehicles.
No gas stations stood glowing beside highways selling beef jerky, caffeine, and existential fatigue at three in the morning.
No suburban garages sheltered cars dependent upon refined fossil fuel extracted from beneath ancient geological tombs.
In 1776, energy still smelled like woodsmoke.
Colonial America ran primarily on forests, fire, and muscle.
Homes were heated with timber.
Meals cooked over flames.
Transportation relied upon horses, sails, and human endurance.
A strong ox or horse represented practical energy far more useful than any laboratory curiosity bubbling inside glass vessels.
And yet, quietly, you and others were beginning to uncover the hidden chemistry of the atmosphere itself.
You identified hydrogen in 1766, though calling it “inflammable air” feels wonderfully understated considering the substance’s tendency to explode enthusiastically when handled carelessly.
Around the same period, Joseph Priestley carbonated water, accidentally laying groundwork for future civilizations to consume alarming quantities of sugary beverages while discussing cryptocurrency.
Alessandro Volta identified methane shortly afterward.
Human progress takes strange scenic routes.
But none of these discoveries yet transformed daily life.
Gases existed mainly as scientific curiosities rather than civilization-shaping infrastructure.
To most Americans in 1776, invisible combustible vapor would have sounded somewhere between witchcraft and tavern nonsense.
Then the 19th century arrived carrying pipes and ambition.
Gas lighting transformed cities first.
Baltimore introduced America’s first gas streetlights in 1817, and suddenly darkness itself began losing territory.
Streets once navigated cautiously beneath moonlight flickered alive with manufactured coal gas.
Lamplighters walked evening routes carrying long poles,
igniting lamps one by one like urban fire priests conducting nightly rituals against the dark.
And cities changed immediately.
Gaslight extended business hours.
Theaters flourished.
Streets became safer, or at least felt safer.
Nightlife expanded.
Urban centers acquired a strange new energy because illumination altered human behavior profoundly. Civilization became more awake.
Before gaslight, darkness imposed boundaries.
After gaslight, evening became economically useful.
At the same time, natural gas itself emerged slowly from geological obscurity into industrial utility.
In Fredonia, New York, America’s first natural gas company formed in 1821 after William Hart drilled one of the earliest gas wells.
Factories adopted gas because it provided stable, high-temperature heat ideal for manufacturing.
Meanwhile, gasoline remained almost laughably unimportant.
Early oil refining focused primarily on kerosene for lamps, leaving gasoline as a messy byproduct often discarded or ignored entirely. Entire barrels of future civilization sat unwanted because no one yet imagined millions of internal combustion engines roaring across asphalt.
…History loves hiding revolutions inside waste products.
Then came the automobile.
And suddenly gasoline transformed from industrial leftovers into liquid mobility itself.
The 20th century became the Age of Gasoline.
Henry, if electricity rewired civilization, gasoline untethered it.
Cars exploded across America with astonishing speed.
By 1920, millions of automobiles crowded roads previously dominated by horses and streetcars.
Gas stations emerged as entirely new commercial ecosystems.
Drivers initially bought gasoline from pharmacies in cans before dedicated filling stations appeared, evolving rapidly into roadside temples of modern movement.
Soon came highways.
Suburbs.
Motels.
Drive-ins.
Road trips.
Entire landscapes reorganized themselves around petroleum.
Gasoline did not merely fuel engines. It fueled the American imagination. Freedom became associated with motion itself, endless roads stretching westward beneath neon signs and open skies. The automobile became less machine than mythology.
And for decades, gasoline felt astonishingly cheap.
From the 1920s through much of the 1960s, Americans enjoyed relatively stable fuel prices while building one of the most car-dependent societies in human history.
Suburban sprawl expanded confidently outward because cheap gasoline made distance affordable.
Families commuted farther.
Businesses shipped farther.
Vacation culture exploded.
The interstate highway system knitted together the continent like veins carrying fossil-fueled blood.
Natural gas simultaneously transformed homes and industry.
Pipelines expanded massively.
Furnaces replaced wood stoves.
Gas ovens modernized kitchens.
Entire regions shifted toward centralized heating systems impossible in earlier centuries.
Modern comfort increasingly arrived through combustion.
Then the 1970s happened.
And America panicked.
Oil embargoes,
geopolitical conflicts,
shortages,
and soaring prices
shattered the illusion of permanently cheap energy.
Gas lines snaked around blocks.
Consumers suddenly confronted the terrifying possibility that modern civilization might actually depend upon unstable global supply chains and international politics involving nations most Americans could not confidently locate on maps.
A humbling national moment.
By the late 20th century, gasoline prices climbed steadily
while environmental awareness grew louder.
Leaded gasoline disappeared after decades of poisoning air and bodies alike.
Efficiency standards improved.
Questions emerged about pollution, climate change, and whether infinite fossil fuel consumption represented a particularly wise long-term strategy for planetary stewardship.
Which brings us to 2026.
And Henry…what a bizarre energy landscape we’ve built.
America is now simultaneously one of the world’s largest oil producers and deeply anxious about energy prices.
Through hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, the shale boom transformed the United States from energy worrier into energy superpower.
Domestic production surged.
Natural gas flooded markets.
America became a major exporter rather than merely dependent importer.
The old fear of scarcity shifted into debates about abundance, sustainability, and consequences.
Natural gas emerged as the great “bridge fuel” of the 21st century, replacing many coal plants because it burns cleaner while still providing reliable electricity generation. Entire electrical grids increasingly depend upon it.
Meanwhile renewable energy grows rapidly beside it: solar, wind, batteries, microgrids.
The old energy order is mutating.
But gasoline still holds enormous emotional and economic power over American life.
Every price spike feels personal because fuel costs ripple through nearly everything:
groceries,
commuting,
shipping,
inflation,
household stress.
By 2022, prices surpassed five dollars per gallon nationally following geopolitical shocks tied to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In early 2026, renewed Middle East tensions pushed prices above $4.50 again in many areas.
A liquid pumped thousands of miles away still dictates moods inside suburban kitchens.
Remarkable species.
And yet another transformation quietly unfolds beneath all this:
The age of the internal combustion engine may be slowly ending.
Electric vehicles expand yearly.
Younger generations often feel less emotionally attached to gasoline culture than previous Americans raised on muscle cars and road-trip mythology.
Efficiency standards improved dramatically.
Urban planning conversations increasingly question whether infinite car dependency remains sustainable economically, environmentally, or psychologically.
Gasoline once symbolized freedom.
Now it increasingly symbolizes complexity.
Still, fossil fuels remain deeply embedded in modern civilization.
Plastics,
fertilizers,
transportation networks,
manufacturing systems,
heating infrastructure,
aviation,
global shipping,
and industrial agriculture all remain profoundly connected to oil and gas.
Transitioning away from them resembles attempting to rebuild an airplane while flying through turbulence carrying groceries and existential dread.
Possible.
Complicated.
Expensive.
Henry, if you could witness America in 2026, you would likely stand astonished watching millions of humans casually ignite controlled explosions inside metal vehicles while complaining about fuel prices through satellite-connected smartphones.
Entire economies now depend upon substances your era barely understood scientifically.
Invisible gases became civilization’s bloodstream.
With admiration, caution, and one painfully expensive tank of gas,
—The Radical Left ⛽🖤
And dear reader, perhaps this is the deeper question gas asks us after 250 years: what happens when the fuels powering prosperity also threaten instability, pollution, geopolitical conflict, and environmental strain?
Can humanity transition toward cleaner systems without fracturing the comforts and economies built atop fossil fuels?
And what does “energy independence” even mean in a globally interconnected world where conflict abroad instantly echoes at local gas pumps?
Because from woodsmoke hearths in 1776 to highways shimmering beneath refinery-powered civilization in 2026, humanity has spent centuries doing the same dangerous, brilliant thing:
Burning ancient worlds to power the next one.