"In looking over the agenda for this workshop, I decided that I had the easiest assignment of all of the eight assigned speakers. This is the historical survey of the analysis of shale oil. The thing that seemed to make this the easiest of the assignments is the word ""Historical"". In my historical coverage of the analytical methods used to characterize shale oil, I will not go into any great detail concerning the methods but will touch primarily on the type of analyses used. Most importantly I will cover the item or portion of the shale oil that is determined by each analysis. The analytical subjects that I will cover in this talk are: (1) assay of oil shale. (2) routine analysis of crude shale oils, (3) analysis of distillate fractions and residues, (4) nitrogen and sulfur analyses, and (5) changes in crude composition with location of shale and with retorting method. To start my historical survey, I will go back to the year 1921. I chose this year for three reasons. First, in that year a proposal was made for a ""standard"" oil-shale assay retort. Second, also in that year there appeared a Bureau of Mines proposal for a ""standard"" method for analysis of crude oils; this method was not only for petroleum crudes but also for shale-oil crudes. The third reason for choosing the year 1921 is that this is the year in which I was born and as far as I am personally concerned it is when history began."