"Whale oil", or the triglyceride derived from adipose tissues "blubbler" of whales, usually contains a large amount of unsaturated fatty acids which burns poorly and produces a lot of soot; poor grades of oil derived from whale guts also had a awful smell, making them a poor choice for indoor use. While it was had been used as lamp oil in the 18th and 19th century, it was quickly phased out for illumination when kerosene became widely available which is both cleaning burning and capale of giving a much brighter flame with a throium dioxide mantle.

The industrial use of whale oil for making soap, candles, shoe polish and paint persisted for much longer because of a price advantage compared to other feedstocks and it was still a common ingredient for margarine making until the 1950s when vegetable oils became cheap enough thanks to the advances in modern agriculture.

A speical category of whale oil is "sperm oil" derived from sperm whales. It is a viscous wax ester stable in a wide range of temperatue and pressure, hence it remained a very important lubricant for all sorts of machinery until the 1960s when the population of sperm whales collapsed.

Source: Whale Oil: An Economic Analysis by Karl Brandt