Natural Gas – 100 Years Ago Today, March 3, 1923!
Tom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.
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Natural gas news from a hundred years ago offers great perspective for discussing one of the cleanest sources of energy available then and still today.
I thought it might be fun and illuminating to look back 100 years ago at what was happening with natural gas. It is eye opening, given all we’ve learned over the last century. There is, indeed, little new under the sun, as our stories repeatedly demonstrate. Natural Gas – 100 Years Ago Today, March 3, 1923. Read our 100-year old news items on the subjects of natural gas on tap, a great deal, “The Natural Gas Man,” using and not wasting gas and bringing about your own funeral!
Natural Gas on Tap!
The Greenville Natural Gas Co. produced some of the best advertisements for natural gas out there in 1923:
03 Mar 1923, Sat The Record-Argus (Greenville, Pennsylvania) Newspapers.com
Well done!
Such A Deal!
We’re going to set a minimum bill, raise the price 60% but give you 5% off for paying on time!
03 Mar 1923, Sat The Indianapolis News (Indianapolis, Indiana) Newspapers.com
It’s not immediately apparent this move attracted more customers.
“The Natural Gas Man”
It’s also not clear this ad worked the way intended:
03 Mar 1923, Sat Fort Worth Record-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas) Newspapers.com
Then again, anything that draws attention…
Use Gas But Don’t Waste It!
Preventing waste of the natural gas resource, as all readers of this feature know, was a major theme 100 years ago and this ad is an example from our neighbors to the north:
03 Mar 1923, Sat Calgary Herald (Calgary, Alberta, Canada) Newspapers.com
They’re still producing natural gas in Alberta, of course, so the waste issue was a a bit overdone but the advice was, nonetheless, solid.
Your Own Funeral?
This full-page ad in the Elmira Gazette a century ago employs a highful unusual and harsh line, telling a natural gas user that if he didn’t stop wasting the stuff it would be “his own funeral.” Click on the advertisement to expand and read the whole thing, as it explains a problem related to the introduction of less efficient “manufactured gas” into the distribution system used by the Elmira Water, Light and Railroad Co. to deliver energy to city residents.
03 Mar 1923, Sat Star-Gazette (Elmira, New York) Newspapers.com
What is also interesting about this ad is that the company then had no idea it was sitting on top of the Marcellus Shale, a geologic formation in which then unimaginably huge quantities of extremely clean, dry gas were trapped, only to become available roughly 85 years later and turned aside by the corrupt and insanely politically correct Cuomo/Hochul administrations.
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