The petroleum industry supplies America with an amazing variety of products that are often “hiding in plain sight.” For Binney & Smith Company, common oilfield paraffin changed the company’s destiny by coloring children’s imaginations.

Dustless chalk circa 1904.

Although they longed for color, students in Alice Stead Binney’s classroom had to settle for dustless chalk. An-Du-Septic dustless chalk was so popular among turn-of-the-century teachers that it won a Gold Medal at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.

Teachers like Alice loved the tidy new product, but their choices were limited. Pencils of the day were primitive, with square “leads” made from a variety of clays, slates, and graphite.

Color writing implements were the toxic and expensive imports of artists, best kept away from schoolchildren.

Alice’s husband Edwin, and his cousin, C. Harold Smith, created the award-winning An-Du-Septic chalk as a consequence of expanding their pigment business into the sideline production of slate pencils for schools. Read the rest of this entry »

February 19, 1863 – Pennsylvania Pipeline

First pipeline from an oilfield to a refinery is completed at Oil Creek, Pennsylvania. New Jersey inventor J. L. Hutchings constructs the 2.5-mile pipeline from James Tarr’s farm near Oil Creek to the Humboldt refinery using newly patented rotary pumps to move the oil through two-inch diameter piping. Unfortunately, leaking makes this innovative pipeline impractical.

Visit the “valley that changed the world” and the Drake Well Museum in Titusville.

February 19, 1889 – Ohio acts to Conserve Natural Gas

The Ohio House of Representatives enacts the state’s first petroleum conservation measure – “an Act to prevent the wasting of Natural Gas and to Provide for the plugging of all abandoned wells.”

The Ohio Oil and Gas Association documents wells drilled/completed by County in 2010.

The state’s first commercial petroleum production had begun almost 30 years earlier in Macksburg, Washington County, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Ohio remains a leading producer, ranking in the top half of all producing states, the agency notes. As of 2010, more than 275,700 wells have been drilled in the state – yielding more than 1.1 billion barrels of oil and more than 8.52 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Modern technologies now are finding success in eastern Ohio – the Marcellus shale.

Ohio also claims an 1814 oil discovery as America’s first with a drilled well, according to the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program. “Two men drilled 475 feet in search of salt in Olive Township of Noble County,” says Director Rhonda Reda. “They cursed when a black liquid oozed into the pit.”

February 20, 1959 – World’s First LNG Tanker arrives

After a three-week voyage, the Methane Pioneer – the world’s first liquefied natural gas tanker – arrives at the world’s first LNG terminal at Canvey Island, England, from Lake Charles, Louisiana. Read the rest of this entry »

His 1939 “Oil Fields of Graham” today remains on display in its original Texas oil patch community’s historic U.S. Postal Service building – now a museum.

Born in Memphis, Missouri, on February 22, 1898, Alexandre Hogue will become known for his paintings of southwestern scenes during the Great Depression – including murals of the 1930s petroleum industry. Read the rest of this entry »

Theodore Seuss Geisel devoted his early career to creating advertising campaigns for Standard Oil – where for more than 15 years he developed the skills that would redefine children’s literature. This Standard Oil Company “Essolube” oil charge card was issued between 1930 and 1940.

The Dr. Seuss Collection of the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California, San Diego notes that the future Dr. Seuss, “hawked such diverse goods as ball bearings, radio promotional spots, beer, and sugar.” The library preserves examples of his Standard Oil artwork, including this 1932 gasoline advertisement.

Ted Geisel’s unique critters populated Standard Oil advertisements for “Flit,” once a popular bug spray.

About 30 years before the Grinch stole Christmas, Dr. Seuss’ strange but wonderful critters worked for Standard Oil of New Jersey.

In the January 14, 1928, issue of New York City’s Judge magazine, Theodore Seuss Geisel first introduced America to one of the many characters inhabiting his imaginative menagerie.

Dr. Seuss later said his experience working at Standard Oil “taught me conciseness and how to marry pictures with words.”

In the cartoon that launched his career, Geisel drew a peculiar dragon inside a castle.  “Flit,” was a popular bug spray of the day – especially against flies and mosquitoes. It was one of Standard Oil Company’s many consumer products derived from petroleum.

Late in 1927, Standard Oil’s growing advertising department, which had focused on sales of Standard and Esso gasolines, lubricating oil, fuel oil and asphalt, reorganized to promote other products, according to author Alfred Chandler Jr.

“Specialities, such as Nujol, Flit, Mistol, and other petroleum by-products that could not be effectively sold through the department’s sales organization, were combined in a separate subsidiary – Stanco,” noted Chandler in his 1962 book, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise.

“Quick, Henry, the Flit!”

Geisel’s fortuitous bug-spray cartoon depicted a medieval knight in his bed, facing a dragon who had invaded his room, and lamenting, “Darn it all, another dragon. And just after I’d sprayed the whole castle with Flit.”

According to the curators of the Dr. Seuss Collection at the University of California, San Diego, an anecdote in Judith and Neil Morgan’s 1995 book Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel, the wife of the ad executive who handled the Standard Oil account saw the dragon cartoon. Read the rest of this entry »

In October 1917, the McClesky No. 1 well started the Ranger oilfield boom in North Texas. In just 20 months, the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company — whose stock had skyrocketed from $30 to $1,250 a share — was drilling 22 wells in the area. Eight refineries were open or under construction, and the city’s four banks had $5 million in deposits.

Read the rest of this entry »

July 2, 1910 – President Taft establishes Naval Petroleum Reserves

The U.S.S. Texas was the last American battleship to be built with coal-fired boilers. By 1927 she had been converted to burn fuel oil and served throughout World War II. The battleship now is a floating museum in LaPorte, Texas.

As the U.S. Navy rapidly converts from coal to oil-burning ships, President William Howard Taft establishes three Naval Petroleum Reserves.

National security concerns about an assured oil supply in the event of war or a national emergency resulted in the Pickett Act of 1910, which authorizes the president to withdraw large areas of potential oil-bearing lands in California and Wyoming as sources of fuel for the Navy.

Within 15 years, the properties that make up the Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves include the three Naval Petroleum Reserves and three Naval Oil Shale Reserves. A Naval Petroleum Reserve Number Four, on the north slope of Alaska, is added in 1923.

“As not only the largest owner of oil lands, but as a prospective large consumer of oil by reason of the increasing use of fuel oil by the Navy, the federal government is directly concerned both in encouraging rational development and at the same time insuring the longest possible life to the oil supply.” -  Message to Congress by President Taft Read the rest of this entry »

February 20, 1959 – First LNG Tanker arrives in England

After a three-week voyage, the Methane Pioneer – the world’s first liquefied natural gas tanker – arrives at the world’s first LNG terminal at Canvey Island, England, from Lake Charles, Louisiana.

The world’s first liquefied natural gas tanker is a converted World War II liberty freighter.

The vessel, a converted World War II liberty freighter, contains five, 7,000-barrel aluminum tanks supported by balsa wood and insulated with plywood and urethane, according to the Center for Energy Economics (CEE).

“This event demonstrated that large quantities of liquefied natural gas could be transported safely across the ocean,” notes CEE, a research arm of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas.

The 340-foot Methane Pioneer, owned by the Comstock Liquid Methane Corporation, refrigerates its cargo to minus 285 degrees Fahrenheit. When vaporized, the LNG expands by the ratio of 600 to one.

“German engineer Karl Von Linde built the first practical compressor refrigeration machine in Munich in 1873,” CEE explains. “The first LNG plant was built in West Virginia in 1912 and began operation in 1917. The first commercial liquefaction plant was built in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1941.” Read the rest of this entry »