Oddly enough, the term only really took off in the 1970s: <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fossil%20fuel&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&

Oddly enough, the term only really took off in the 1970s: <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fossil%20fuel&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fossil%20fuel&...> Zooming in on the 19th century, the term was already seeing use in the 1770s/80s, and was rising in usage well before 1860, by which time it had reached a peak. <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fossil+fuel&year_start=1700&year_end=1900&corpus=en-2012&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fossil+fuel&ye...> The Standard Oil Company was founded in 1882. Its predecessor Standard Oil Company of Ohio was founded in 1870. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil> I call bullshit on EricE's unfounded claims.