For some, the beginning of the modern offshore oil and natural gas industry can be traced to an 1869 U.S. patent.

Although it will never be constructed as originally designed, Thomas Rowland’s offshore platform with its four telescoping legs is an 1869 technological marvel.

On May 4, 1869, Thomas Fitch Rowland (1831-1907), owner of Continental Iron Works in Greenpoint, New York, received a patent for his “submarine drilling apparatus.”

Rowland’s patent (No. 89,794) for a fixed, working platform for drilling offshore to a depth of almost 50 feet – just ten years after Edwin Drake made the nation’s first commercial oil discovery in Titusville, Pennsylvania – pioneers modern offshore drilling technology.

Although his rig is designed to operate in shallow water, the anchored, four-legged tower resembles modern offshore rigs. It has telescoping legs.

My invention consists – First, in novel construction of drill frame, or stand, or, as it may be termed, working-platform, by providing or forming it with telescopic legs made up of tubes and plungers.

The platform’s legs are connected with suitable hydraulic attachments or devices for forcing water into the legs for the proper support of the platform at different elevations, according to the depth of the water, and to adjust the legs or their plungers to a firm bearing on the rock to be drilled. Read the rest of this entry »

On April 22, 1920 – Natural Gas discovered in South Arkansas

The Arkansas Natural Resources Museum opened in 1986.

The first natural gas well in south Arkansas is completed two and a half miles southeast of El Dorado.

Drilled to a depth of 2,247 feet, the well produces between 40 million to 60 million cubic feet of gas a day – and “a spray of oil produced from the Nacatoch sands,” according to The Discovery of Oil in South Arkansas, 1920-1924.

Although just six days earlier a small independent company completes the first oil well in Arkansas, the well does not produce commercial quantities. Officially, it will be the January 10, 1921, Busey-Armstrong No. 1 well’s discovery of oil that launches the state’s petroleum industry.

By 1925, a young oilman named Haroldson Lafayette “H.L.” Hunt has acquired substantial holdings in the El Dorado and Smackover fields. In 1930 he will discover the largest oilfield in the United States less than 175 miles away. Read “H.L. Hunt and the East Texas Oilfield.” Read the rest of this entry »

Brothers Amos and James Densmore designed and fabricated the first successful railroad tank cars used in the Pennsylvania oilfields in 1865. Patented a year later and built by the thousands, their invention greatly improved the bulk transportation of oil. Photo courtesy the Drake Well Museum.

The Densmore Railroad Tank Car will briefly revolutionize the bulk transportation of crude oil to market.

Railroad oil tank cars became the latest of a growing number of oilfield innovations when two brothers received a U.S. patent on April 10, 1866.

James and Amos Densmore of Meadville, Pennsylvania, were granted the patent for their “Improved Car for Transporting Petroleum,” which they developed one year earlier in the booming oil region of Northwestern Pennsylvania.

Using an Atlantic & Great Western Railroad flatcar, the brothers secured two tanks in order to ship oil in bulk. Patent No. 53,794 describes and illustrates the railroad car’s design.

The nature of our invention consists in combining two large, light tanks of iron or wood or other material with the platform of a common railway flat freight-car, making them practically part of the car, so as they carry the desired substance in bulk instead of in barrels, casks, or other vessels or packages, as is now universally done on railway cars.

The brothers described the use of special bolts at the top and bottom of the tanks to act as a braces and “to prevent any shock or jar to the tank from the swaying of the car while in motion.” 

An historical marker on U.S. 8 south of Titusville memorializes the Densmore brothers’ contribution to petroleum transportation technology.

The first functional railway oil tank car was invented and constructed in 1865 by James and Amos Densmore at nearby Miller Farm along Oil Creek. It consisted of two wooden tanks placed on a flat railway car; each tank held 40-45 barrels of crude oil. A successful test shipment was sent in September 1865 to New York City. By 1866, hundreds of tank cars were in use. The Densmore Tank Car revolutionized the bulk transportation of crude oil to market.

Safer and stronger, riveted-iron horizontal tanks will soon replace Densmore tanks.

According to an ExplorePAhistory.com article, the benefit of such cars to the oil industry was immense – it cost $170 less to ship eighty barrels of oil from Titusville to New York in a tank car than in individual barrels. But the Densmore cars had flaws.

They were unstable, top-heavy, prone to leaks, and limited in capacity by the eight-foot width of the flatcar. Within a year, oil haulers shifted from the Densmore vertical vats to larger, horizontal riveted iron cylindrical tanks, which also demonstrated greater structural integrity during derailments or collisions.

The same basic design for transporting petroleum is still used today as railroads have put  dozens of other products – from corn syrup to chemicals – in the versatile tank car.

Although the Densmore brothers left the oil region by 1867 – their inventiveness was far from over.

The Densmore brothers invent one of the first typewriters.

In 1875, Amos assisted Christopher L. Sholes to rearrange the “type writing machine” keyboard – so that commonly used letters no longer collided and got stuck. The “QWERTY” arrangement vastly improved Shole’s original 1868 invention.

Following his brother’s work with Sholes, inventor of the first practical typewriter, James Densmore’s oilfield financial success helped the brothers establish the Densmore Typewriter Company, which produced its first model in 1891.

The ExplorePAhistory.com article concludes: Biographies of the Densmores – and even their personal papers now residing at the Milwaukee Public Museum – all refer to their work on typewriters, but make no mention of their pioneering work in railroad tank car design.

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Petroleum drilling technologies, among the most advanced of any industry, have evolved since 1859 – especially as wells have reached far deeper. In 1922, it took a Texas wildcatter’s experience and ingenuity to invent a device designed to stop gushers.

Gushers like this famous one on Spindletop Hill, Texas, in 1901 were dramatic – but dangerous and wasteful.

The image of James Dean celebrating in a rain of oil may have been dramatic in 1956, but most oilfield gushers ended much earlier. By the time the movie “Giant” was made, the technology of well control and blowout prevention had been in place more than 30 years.

Perhaps the most famous high-pressure blowout occurred at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas.

On January 10, 1901, a three-man crew was drilling when a six-inch stream of oil and gas erupted 100 feet into the air. This oilfield would prove to be among the largest and most significant for a gasoline-hungry nation.

The Beaumont newspaper described the discovery well drilled by Anthony F. Lucas and Pattillo Higgins of the Gladys City Oil, Gas, and Manufacturing Company: “An Oil Geyser – Remarkable Phenomenon South of Beaumont – Gas Blows Pipe from Well and a Flow of Oil Equaled Nowhere Else on Earth.”

It took nine days and 500,000 barrels of oil before a shut off valve for the well (producing from a salt dome, as Lucas had predicted) could be affixed to the casing to stop the flow. At the time and for years to follow, images of gushers would attract investors.

James Abercrombie invented the “ram-type” blowout preventer – using hydrostatic pistons to close on the drill stem and form a seal against the well pressure.

Learn more at the Spindletop/Gladys City Boomtown Museum in Beaumont. Read the rest of this entry »

March 4, 1918 – West Virginia Well sets World Depth Record

On the Martha Goff farm in Harrison County, West Virginia, the Hope Natural Gas Company drills to 7,386 feet and brings the world’s deepest well record to America.

Until then, the deepest well had been drilled to 7,345 feet near Czuehon, Germany.

A March 1974 well set a world record while drilling in Oklahoma’s Anadarko Basin, about 12 miles west of Cordell. The Bertha Rogers No. 1 drilled almost six miles into Oklahoma’s Anadarko Basin before the drill bit stuck.

Today, rotary rigs in the Gulf of Mexico reach up to 35,000 feet deep. A 1970s experimental well on Russia’s Kola Peninsula during the Soviet era exceeded 40,000 feet – after ten years of drilling. Visit the Oil and Gas Museum in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Read the rest of this entry »

When Erle P. Halliburton patents his remarkable “Method and Means for Cementing Oil Wells” on March 1, 1921, he brings greater efficiency, production and safety to America’s oilfields.

Erle Halliburton’s 1921 well cementing process isolates down-hole zones, guards against collapse of the casing – and permits control of the well throughout its producing life.

An Erle Halliburton statue was dedicated in 1993 in Duncan, Oklahoma.

Halliburton’s small petroleum equipment and service company headquartered in Ardmore, Oklahoma, will receive many more patents on its way to becoming a worldwide leader in extending the life of oil and natural gas wells.

After working in Burkburnett, Texas, in 1919 Halliburton had moved to the booming Healdton oilfield near Ardmore, where he established the New Method Oil Well Cementing Company.

“It is well known to those skilled in the art of oil well drilling that one of the greatest obstacles to successful development of oil bearing sands has been the encountering of liquid mud water and the like during and after the process of drilling the wells,” Halliburton notes in his 1920 patent application. Read the rest of this entry »

Oil patch lore says “yellow dog” lanterns were so named because their two burning wicks resembled a dog’s glowing eyes at night. Others say the lamps cast a dog’s head shadow on the derrick floor.

Jonathan Dillen’s lantern was “especially adapted for use in the oil regions…where the explosion of a lamp is attended with great danger by causing destructive conflagration and consequent loss of life and property.”

Rare is the community oil and natural gas museum that doesn’t have a “yellow dog” in its collection. The two-wicked lamp is an oilfield icon.

Some say that the unusual design originated with whaling ships – but neither the Nantucket nor New Bedford whaling museums can find any such evidence.

Railroad museums have collections of cast iron smudge pots, but nothing quite like these heavy, odd shaped, crude-oil burning lanterns once prevalent on petroleum fields from Pennsylvania to California.

Although many companies manufactured the iron or steel lamps, the yellow dog’s origins remain in the dark.

Oil patch lore says these lanterns were so named because their two burning wicks resembled a dog’s glowing eyes at night.

Others say the lamps cast a dog’s head shadow on the derrick floor.

Inventor Jonathan Dillen of Petroleum Centre, Pennsylvania, was first to patent what became the yellow dog in 1870. Read the rest of this entry »

January 14, 1928 – Future Dr. Seuss begins Career at Standard Oil  

During the Great Depression, Theodore Geisel created advertising campaigns for Standard Oil – where he developed the skills – and critters – that would redefine children’s literature.

New York City’s Judge magazine includes its first cartoon drawn by Theodore Seuss Geisel – who will develop his skills as “Dr. Seuss” while working for Standard Oil Company.

In the 1928 cartoon that launches his career, Geisel draws a peculiar dragon trying to dodge Flit, a popular bug spray of the day. Read the rest of this entry »

January 7, 1905 – Discovery of Humble Oil Field leads to Major Oil Company

Standard Oil of New Jersey will acquire a 50 percent interest in Humble in 1919.

The Humble oil field in Harris County, Texas, is discovered by C. E. Barrett. His Beatty No. 2 well will yield 8,500 barrels a day and launch an oil boom.

The small community of Humble will grow from 700 to 20,000 in a few  months. Overall production from the field – the largest in Texas for the year 1905 –  reaches almost 16 million barrels of oil.

Natural gas had been discovered on “Moonshine Hill” in October 1904 by Higgins Oil and Fuel Company. Early reports of natural gas seepage in the area were not uncommon in the late 19th century.

According to a 1972 historical marker in downtown Humble, the oil field leads to the creation of the Humble Oil and Refining Company in 1911 by a group of its operators, including Ross Sterling, a future governor of Texas.

“Production from several strata here exceeded the total for fabulous Spindletop by 1946,” the marker notes. “Known as the greatest salt dome field, Humble still produces and the town for which it was named continues to thrive.”

Humble Oil Company will consolidate operations with Standard Oil of New Jersey, eventually leading to Exxon and today’s ExxonMobil. Read the rest of this entry »

December 31, 1954 - Ohio Company sets Depth Record in California

The West Kern Oil Museum in Taft – where a statue was dedicated in 2011 – educates visitors about California’s energy industry.

As drilling technology continues to advance, a new record depth of 21,482 feet is reached by an Ohio Oil Company exploratory well about 17 miles southwest of Bakersfield, Kern County, California, in the San Joaquin Valley.

The Ohio Oil Company (today’s Marathon Oil Corporation) sets a world-record with its No. 1 KCL-A-72-4. The well is a dry hole.

Deep-drilling technologies will advance in coming decades. In 1974 – after 504 days of drilling – the No. 1 Bertha Rogers reaches total depth of 31,441 feet in Oklahoma’s Anadarko basin. The well hits molten sulfur and is abandoned.

Visit the West Kern Oil Museum and the “Black Gold: The Oil Experience” exhibit at the Kern County Museum.

January 2, 1866 – Early Rotary Drilling Patent

An “Improvement in Rock Drills” patent is filed that for the first time includes the basic elements of modern rotary rigs and notes that its “peculiar construction is particularly adapted for boring deep wells.” Read the rest of this entry »

December 26, 1905 – Nellie Bly patents the 55-Gallon Drum

Nellie Bly – well known in her day as a journalist for the New York World newspaper – is issued a U.S. patent for the “metal barrel” that will become today’s 55-gallon steel drum.

Nellie Bly, known worldwide for her exploits as a reporter for the New York World, was issued a U.S. patent on December 26, 1905 — for the “Metal Barrel” that would become today’s standard 55-gallon steel drum.

Patent No. 808,327 is assigned to Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, better known as Nellie Bly, the most famous woman journalist of her day – who is also president of the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company.

An 1890 photograph of Nellie Bly.

Bly’s company, which produces milk cans, boilers, enamel ware, and dozens of other steel products, will manufacture early versions of the “metal barrel” that becomes the now ubiquitous 55-gallon steel drum.

After marrying wealthy industrialist Robert Seaman in 1894, Bly’s invention begins with a 1904 visit to Europe, where she first sees glycerin containers made of steel. Read more in “The Remarkable Nellie Bly.”

“I determined to make steel containers for the American trade,” she recalls. “My first experiment leaked and the second was defective because the solder gave way, and then I brazed them with the result that the liquid inside was ruined by the brazing metal.”

Bly perfected her technique. “I finally worked out the steel package to perfection, patented the design, put it on the market and taught the American public to use the steel barrel,” she explains.

Soon she would proudly claim, “I am the only manufacturer in the country who can produce a certain type of steel barrel for which there is an immense demand at present, for the transportation of oil, gasoline, and other liquids.” Read the rest of this entry »

December 10, 1844 – “Coal Oil Johnny” adopted

“Coal Oil Johnny” Steele

The future “Coal Oil Johnny” is adopted as an infant by Culbertson and Sarah McClintock. John Steels is adopted along with his sister, Permelia, and brought home to the McClintock farm on the banks of Oil Creek in Venango County, Pennsylvania.

The petroleum boom prompted by Edwin Drake’s discovery 15 years later – America’s first commercial oil well – will lead to the widow McClintock making a fortune in royalties. She leaves the money to her only surviving child, Johnny, when she dies in a kitchen fire in 1864. At age 20, he inherits $24,500 – and $2,800 a day in royalties.

“Coal Oil Johnny” Steele will earn his name in 1865 after such a legendary year of extravagance that years later the New York Times will report: “In his day, Steele was the greatest spender the world had ever known…he threw away $3,000,000 in less than a year.”

Read more in “Legend of ‘Coal Oil Johnny.’” Read the rest of this entry »

December 4, 1928 – First Oil Discovery using Reflection Seismography 

A monument in Seminole, Oklahoma, commemorates the December 4, 1928, birth of reflection seismography, a vital petroleum exploration technology.

A new and revolutionary oil field technology is applied for the first time near Seminole, Oklahoma.

Amerada Petroleum Corporation drills into the Viola limestone formation to bring in the first oil well from a geological structure identified by reflection seismography.

This seismic survey, executed by Amerada Petroleum’s subsidiary Geophysical Research, uses technology that evolved from the early seismic experiments of Reginald Fessenden, Ludger Mintrop – and renowned Oklahoma physicist John C. Karcher. Read the rest of this entry »

November 12, 1899 – Newspaper features Mrs. Alford’s Dynamite Factory

A laminated 1899 article preserved at the Penn-Brad Oil Museum in Bradford, Pennsylvania, tells the story of Mrs. Byron Alford — a petroleum pioneer more than 20 years before women won the right to vote.

The New York World profiles Mrs. Byron Alford – the “Only Woman in the World who Owns and Operates a Dynamite Factory.”

Alford’s dangerous business operates on five acres outside of Bradford, Pennsylvania, with a daily production of 3,000 pounds of “nitro-glycerine” and 6,000 pounds of dynamite. Local drillers need the explosives for “shooting” wells to boost production. Mrs. Alford manufactures it for them in 12 unpainted wood buildings.

Brick buildings would have been prettier, Alford notes in the newspaper article, but it would cost more to replace them and, “the owner of a nitroglycerine factory never knows beforehand when it is going to blow up or afterward why it did blow up…there is never anyone to explain how it happened.”

Penn-Brad Oil Museum

Alford first entered the business in 1884 with her husband. When Mr. Alford’s health began failing 10 years later, she took over. “It is an odd business for a woman to be in,” she says, “but I know no reason why a woman who understands it cannot manage it as well as a man.”

Despite the hazards, Alford  prospers for many years. She dies of natural causes in 1924 at age 77. Today, new technologies for producing natural gas from the Marcellus Shale have brought renewed prosperity to Bradford – and much of western Pennsylvania.

Visit the Penn-Brad Historical Oil Park and Museum and learn about America’s “first billion dollar oil field.” Read the rest of this entry »

October 23, 1908 – Oil Boom arrives in Wyoming

A postcard from Midwest, Wyoming, pictures the Salt Creek oil boom. Production continues today thanks to new technologies.

Wyoming’s first oil boom begins when the Dutch-owned Petroleum Maatschappij Salt Creek brings in the “Big Dutch” well – a gusher about 40 miles north of Casper.

Although the Salt Creek area was known to be productive, the central Salt Creek dome received little attention until noted Italian geologist Dr. Cesare Porro recommended the drilling site to Petroleum Maaschappij in 1906.

Drillers J. E. Stock and his father, working for an English corporation known as the Oil Wells Drilling Syndicate, brought in the well at 1050 feet with initial production of 600 barrels a day.

More than 4,000 wells have since been drilled in the Salt Creek oilfield, producing from depths of 22 to 4,500 feet. The field has ten producing zones. To increase production, water-flooding began in the 1960s and carbon dioxide injection in 2004. In 2007, the field produced almost three million barrels of oil. Read more in “Petroleum Pioneers of Wyoming.”

October 23, 1948 – Pipeline Inspection Technology advances

Photo of a “smart pig” used for testing pipelines courtesy of Pacific L.A. Marine Terminal.

Northern Natural Gas Company records the first use of an X-ray machine for internal testing of petroleum pipeline welds.

The company examines a 20-inch diameter pipe north its Clifton, Kansas, compressor station. The device – now known as a “smart pig” – travels up to 1,800 feet inside the pipe, imaging each weld.

As early as 1926, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory had investigated the use of gamma-ray radiation to detect flaws in welded steel and in 1944, Cormack Boucher patented an “Industrial Radiographic Apparatus” described as “particularly suitable for radio-graphing annular welds in relatively large diameter cylindrical structures.”

Modern inspection tools may employ magnetic particle, ultrasonic, eddy current, and other inspection methods to verify pipeline and weld integrity. Read the rest of this entry »

February 28, 1935 – Nylon is World’s First Synthetic Fiber

The world’s first synthetic fiber – nylon – is discovered by a former Harvard professor working at a DuPont Corporation research laboratory. Later called Nylon 6 by scientists, the revolutionary product comes from chemicals found in petroleum.

Wallace Carothers had experimented with artificial materials for more than six years. He previously discovered neoprene rubber (commonly used in wetsuits) and made major contributions to understanding polymers – molecules composed in long chains.

DuPont names the new petroleum product nylon – although chemists call it Nylon 6 because the adipic acid and hexamethylene diamine each contain 6 carbon atoms per molecule. Strong and durable petroleum-based polymer products like nylon are in common daily use throughout the world.

Just 32-years-old, Carothers creates fibers when he combines the chemicals amine, hexamethylene diamine, and adipic acid. He forms a polymer chain using a process in which individual molecules join together with water as a byproduct. But the fibers are weak, explains a PBS series, A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries.

“Carothers’ breakthrough came when he realized the water produced by the reaction was dropping back into the mixture and getting in the way of more polymers forming,” notes the PBS website. “He adjusted his equipment so that the water was distilled and removed from the system. It worked!” Read the rest of this entry »