(1) Coal-tear Explanation: Coal tar is a brown or black liquid of extremely high viscosity. In the coal gas era, there were many companies in Britain whose business was to distill coal tar to separate the higher-value fractions, such as naphtha, creosote and pitch. Naphthalene is derived from a kind of naphtha (a broad term encompassing any volatile, flammable liquid hydrocarbon mixture, including coal tar).