[bratticus]

Feb 1949 Popular Science article speculating on using kerogen shale.

http://goo.gl/vHp3U

Same month M. King Hubbert published Energy from Fossil Fuels in Science.

[dsula]

That magazine is a riot.
Page 298: Camel ad: "More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette."
The good old times!!

[Vogelzang]

Vote Republican and we can have 30 cents a gallon gas again!

http://www.sciliterature.50webs.com/OilShaleLinks.htm

[TheDude]

At my blog I cobbled together a whole raft of kneeslappers like that from old newspaper articles, taken from Google News Archives. Shale, ethanol, reserves, deepwater, etc. Today I was checking out some pieces from 1958 about the imminent arrival of commercial fusion power, within 20 years at the latest. BZZZT! Goes the buzzer.

They were talking up shale even earlier than the 40s - I know it was discussed in the 20s, and in the 19th century too I read somewhere; Scotland was utilizing shale before Col Drake's time, after all, and people in the Gilded Era were saying we'd better do something once we run out of the world's oil supplies, which seem to be centered around NE Pennsylvania...