Measuring Risk: Small-Scale Technologies and the Making of the Global Oil Economy, 1859-1910

In the mid-nineteenth century, kerosene refined from petroleum revolutionized artificial illumination by making lighting widely affordable. Yet it posed serious risks of lamp explosion, claiming lives and destroying property. This article intervenes in histories of energy and technology that privilege large-scale infrastructures and imperial rivalry by shifting attention to small-scale instruments. It argues that flashpoint testers-devices designed to measure everyday risk-forged a transimperial collaboration between the United States and Britain. Diverse flashpoint testers gave rise to different risk cultures. While the United States developed a vernacular culture in which ordinary users managed safety themselves, Britain cultivated an administrative one, with trained inspectors enforcing standardized regulations. As the latter approach proved more reliable, kerosene importers entrusted Britain with the role of governing kerosene's risk in global markets, while the United States took on the role of a manufacturer, conforming to the British standard. By showing how the flashpoint tester made risk measurable, negotiable, and governable, this article argues that such practices enabled the rapid expansion of the petroleum economy through transimperial collaboration, while also reshaping how historians understand the making of energy systems.