by Bruce Wells | Dec 28, 2025 | Petroleum Art
How a red Pegasus soared into Dallas petroleum history.
The Mobil Oil Pegasus perched atop the Magnolia Petroleum building in Dallas from 1934 until 1999, when rust and growing structural issues forced its removal. On the first day of 2000, a carefully crafted duplicate returned to the Dallas skyline.
Thanks to its widespread popularity, Mobil Oil’s high-flying trademark returned to its Texas home with one red Pegasus on each side of a sign painstakingly recreated by the American Porcelain Enamel Company. As the year 1999 drew to a close, the duplicated Pegasus soared again. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Dec 27, 2025 | Petroleum Technology
Early patent for a hollow “drill-rod” and roller bit for “making holes in hard rock.”
An “Improvement in Rock Drills” patent issued to a New Yorker after the Civil War included the basic elements of the modern petroleum industry’s rotary rig.
On January 2, 1866, Peter Sweeney of New York City was granted U.S. patent No. 51,902 for a drilling system with many new technologies. His rotary rig design, which improved upon an 1844 British patent by Robert Beart, applied the rotary drilling method’s “peculiar construction particularly adapted for boring deep wells.”
Peter Sweeney’s 1866 “Stone Drill” patent included a roller bit using a “rapid rotary motion” that would evolve into modern rotary drilling technologies.
Sweeney’s design provided for a roller bit with replaceable cutting wheels such that “by giving the head a rapid rotary motion the wheels cut into the ground or rock and a clean hole is produced.”
Deeper Drilling
In another Sweeny innovation, the “drill-rod” was hollow and connected with a hose through which “a current of steam or water can be introduced in such a manner that the discharge of the dirt and dust from the bottom of the hole is facilitated.”
Better than commonly used steam-powered cable-tool technology, which used a heavy rope to lift and drop iron chisel-like bits, Sweeney claimed his drilling apparatus could be used with great advantage for “making holes in hard rock in a horizontal, oblique, or vertical direction.”
Drilling operations could be continued without interruption, Sweeny explained in his patent application, “with the exception of the time required for adding new sections to the drill rod as the depth of the hole increases. The dirt is discharged during the operation of boring and a clean hole is obtained into which the tubing can be introduced without difficulty.”
A 1917 rotary rig in the Coalinga, California, oilfield, where R.C. “Carl” Baker invented many advanced drilling technologies. Photo courtesy of the Joaquin Valley Geology Organization.
Foreseeing the offshore exploration industry, Sweeney’s patent concluded with a note that “the apparatus can also be used with advantage for submarine operations.”
With the U.S. oil industry’s rapid growth after the first commercial well in 1859, drilling contractors improved upon Sweeney’s 1866 innovations. Cable-tool methods also improved as wells got deeper.
In 1891, Andrew J. Ross patented (No. US459309A) a method “to provide simple and efficient means for rotating the well-tubing, to provide a removable drilling-bit adapted to be rotated by the said well-tubing, which bit when the well is bored may be removed.
Among later drilling advancements was a device fitted to the rig’s rotary table that clamped around the drill pipe and turned. As this “kelly bushing” rotated, the pipe rotated, and with it the bit downhole. The torque of the rotary table was transmitted to the drill stem.
Thirty-five years after Sweeney’s patent, rotary drilling revolutionized the petroleum industry after a 1901 oil discovery by Capt. Anthony Lucas at Spindletop Hill in Texas. Less than a decade later, Howard Hughes Sr. tested a rotary bit with twin-cones that could drill through hard rock, helping to find previously unreachable oil and natural gas reserves.
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Recommended Reading: History Of Oil Well Drilling
(2007); The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (1991); The Extraction State, A History of Natural Gas in America (2021). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Sweeney’s 1866 Rotary Rig.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/technology/1866-patent-rotary-rig. Last Updated: December 27, 2025. Original Published Date: January 2, 2013.
by Bruce Wells | Dec 26, 2025 | Petroleum Art
The use of energy resources has defined modern civilization. Museums, and historians, writers, and educators have preserved the heritage of the petroleum industry since the first U.S. well of 1859. Oilfield artists of all media remain important recorders and interpreters of petroleum’s worldwide influence.
For oil patch students and researchers, the American Oil & Gas Historical Society created the work-in-progress Oil in Art articles, to accompany the forums and resources page, which includes links for photography sources (especially universities and the Library of Congress), petroleum history videos, and a small AOGHS selection of books and authors.
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by Bruce Wells | Dec 26, 2025 | Petroleum Technology
Giant Oklahoma rigs drilled to record depths in the 1970s.
The Anadarko Basin, extending more than 50,000 square miles across west-central Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, includes some of the most prolific U.S. natural gas reserves — and a 1974 drilling record.
Beginning in the late 1950s, when technological advances allowed it, Anadarko Basin wells in Oklahoma began to be drilled more than two miles deep in search of natural gas. Dangerous, highly pressurized formations required state-of-the-art blowout preventers (see Ending Oil Gushers — BOP). (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Dec 25, 2025 | Petroleum Companies
Arkansas oilfield discoveries as early as the 1920s created boom towns and launched the state’s petroleum industry. In the 1950s, Arkansas Oil Ventures would try but fail to be part of a resurgence in drilling.
Arkansas’ first commercial oil well was drilled in 1921 at El Dorado in Union County, 15 miles north of the Louisiana border. The 68-square-mile field led U.S. oil output by 1925 with production reaching 70 million barrels of oil. (more…)
