Patent US2349721
Anyone who grew up in an at least semi-southern state, like West Virginia, and who spent any time outdoors in the summer time, became aware that telephone poles and railroad ties, all made of wood, had been pressure treated, impregnated, with "tar" to prevent rot and prolong their useful life; a tar that became more liquid in the summer heat and stained shoes and hands.
That tar, that wood-preserving oil, was often made from Coal.
As it happens, some enterprising folks down in Georgia, where, because of the heat and humidity, they need a lot of wood preserving oil, and where, like in West Virginia, a lot of folks had some practical experience converting solids into volatile liquids in isolated spots out in the woods, who made such preservatives out of Coal, got to thinking, way back during WWII, when gasoline was being rationed, about whether or not they could actually make liquid fuel for their trucks out of the Coal tar, which they were no doubt shipping in from up north, or maybe just from next-door Alabama where they mine a little Coal, since that Coal tar, we conjecture, reminded them of crude petroleum.
It turns out they could.
As evidenced by the following excerpt from the US Patent, linked above and attached as a document file:
"Producing Valuable Oils from Coal Tar - United States Patent 2,349,721
Date: May 23, 1944
Inventor: Jacquelin C. Harvey, Jr.
Assignee: Southern Wood Preserving Company, Georgia
Abstract: The instant process relates to the production of valuable liquids from mixtures of high temperature coal tar fractions.
More specifically the instant process relates to a method of treating mixtures of high temperature coal tar fractions with a reducing gas (as for instance hydrogen, carbon monoxide or the like) whereby to induce ... valuable ... low boiling liquids ... . ... it is now discovered that ... practically the entirety, and in some cases the entirety of the ... tars may be made to yield to hydrogenation.
The end products of the instant process may be employed as ... motor fuels."
---------
There's a lot more to it, of course, but the technical details aren't our point in this dispatch.
Our point is, that:
Before many of us were born, and during a time of war when gasoline was short, some good ole' boys down in Georgia, where they don't mine any Coal, figured out that they could make "motor fuels" out of "coal tar".
