Offshore Rig Patent of 1869
Thomas Rowland’s Continental Iron Works produced gas fittings, welded oil storage tanks, and a famous ironclad.
The origins of the modern offshore oil exploration and production industry must include the 1869 offshore rig patent “Rock Drill” design of a skilled New York engineer.
On May 4, 1869, Thomas Fitch Rowland, owner of Continental Iron Works in Greenpoint, New York, received a U.S. patent for an unusual “submarine drilling apparatus.” His patent (No. 89,794) for a fixed, offshore drilling platform came just 10 years after America’s first commercial oil discovery in Titusville, Pennsylvania.
