2896: Natural Gas: As Opposed to What? Nov 25, 2024

Natural gas is, true to form, natural gas, but this leaves a few awkward questions:

•Why don’t we say natural for plenty of other naturally occurring fuels, like petroleum?

•What is unnatural gas?

•Why isn’t helium, also removed from pockets trapped underground, a “natural gas”? 

Basically, it all comes down to the alternative: coal gas. Before the widespread use of natural gas, the gas powered burners of the 19th and early 20th centuries were coal gas, or sometimes wood gas powered, in a process similar to creating coke. This was later included in the term ‘manufactured gas’, referring here to all solids turned to gas for fuel consumption. 

The trends in technological innovations and acceptance can be mapped linguistically, as seen on this graph. ‘Coal gas’ became popular in the 1820’s, though it existed in the decade before, where ‘manufactured gas’ only took off in the 1930’s, and by the ‘50’s, it and ‘coal gas’ were certainly on the decline. ‘Natural gas’ only firmly became more popular around 1900 but has since become incredibly dominant in comparison.