by Bruce Wells | Aug 22, 2024 | Petroleum Art
Postal Service commemorates U.S. petroleum history centennial with 120 million stamps.
A centennial oil stamp commemorating the birth of the U.S. oil and natural gas industry was issued on August 27, 1959, by Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield, who proclaimed: “The American people have great reason to be indebted to this industry. It has supplied most of the power that has made the American standard of living possible.”
As the sesquicentennial of the first U.S. well drilled to produce oil approached in 2009, a special “Oil 150” committee sought U.S. Postal Service approval for a commemorative stamp. The committee and historians in more than 30 petroleum-producing states petitioned for a stamp similar to one issued for the industry’s 1959 centennial of the first commercial U.S. oil well. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Jul 31, 2024 | Petroleum Art
Caveman cartoonist Victor Hamlin worked as an oilfield cartographer in Permian Basin.
The widely popular Depression Era newspaper comic strip character Alley Oop began in the imagination of a young cartographer who drew Permian Basin oilfield maps in Texas.
The club-wielding Alley Oop caveman appeared for the first time in the summer of 1933 when Victor Hamlin, a former Ft. Worth Star-Telegram reporter, published fanciful tales about the Stone Age Kingdom of Moo. Hamlin began syndicating his daily cartoon in Iowa’s Des Moines Register.
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by Bruce Wells | Jan 1, 2024 | Petroleum Art
Brief looks at some history books, personal accounts and biographies from America’s oilfields.
American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) website content includes links to just a small sample of petroleum-related history books and some of media resources relating to the history of U.S. energy. Classic historical texts available online include Paul H. Giddens’s 1936 The Birth of the Oil Industry (with introduction by Ida Tarbell).
Because AOGHS also links oil patch artwork featured in Oilfield Artists, many website visitors have asked a post that includes their fiction, research, and personal accounts or biographies. (more…)
