When the world's at stake,
go beyond the headlines.

In 1975, the New York Times reported on a growing number of transmission problems in Pontiacs, Buicks, Cadillacs, and several other General Motors cars. The source of the trouble was a recent law against hunting whales, whose oil had been used in G.M.’s automatic transmission fluid. “The whale oil was used because of its anti-rust qualities, the company said, but a new transmission formula had to be used starting on 1973 models.” Without whale oil, fittings in the cooling unit began to corrode, causing substantial damage to the cars.These days, it sometimes seems as if the entire whaling industry existed for its own sake — a romantic quest intended solely to forge the American spirit and perhaps inspire novels and paintings as an afterthought. To the extent that anyone thinks about whale oil, it’s as an anachronistic lighting source — something to burn in a lamp before kerosene and electricity came along. But, as G.M.’s 20th century troubles reveal, whaling was also critical to the industrial revolution. When whales weren’t being elevated into metaphors, they were being boiled down and squeezed into a “pale yellow liquid wax.” From tractors to textile mills, a host of new machinery relied on whale oil as a lubricant, not to mention everyday items like watches, bicycles, and cash registers. In other words, whale oil was what kept American life running smoothly, and eased the country’s glide to global power.Needless to say, the dual nature of 19th-century whaling is nicely reflected in maps from the time. This 1844 zoological map, for example, was intended as a game for children. It shows a sperm whale fishery off the Falkland Islands as part of an exotic tableau, alongside gauchos chasing wild cattle and a boa constrictor swallowing a deer.William Spooner, “Spooner’s Zoological Map of The World,” 1844.In