27 at the unexpectedly shallow depth of 69 ft. Smith, who came to Titusville in the spring of 1859. He decided to drill for oil and employed a salt well driller, W. The first year he opened up the old springs and attempted to exploit them. Drake went to Titusville in Dec., 1857, to start operations for the company. Townsend, a New Haven banker, and his associates.Įdwin L. Financial support was finally obtained from James M. They were unable to sell stock until they published a glowing report on the commercial value of the oil written by Benjamin Silliman, Jr., a famous chemist and professor at Yale U. Eveleth, formed a company which purchased the farm on which the seeps were located. The spark finally occurred at Titusville, Pa., on the site of a famous oil seep that had been exploited by the Moundbuilders and later by the Seneca Indians and the early settlers. The combination of a large and growing demand for oil, a well-developed refining industry and a highly developed drilling technology provided an explosive mixture. It was inevitable that this new source of oil should come to the attention of the coal oil refiners, and that attempts should be made to produce oil by drilling. At most of these it was used to illuminate the plants and grease the machinery. Petroleum was produced along with the brine at nearly all the salt manufacturing plants. A drilling technology had developed, and the methods of cable tool drilling were mostly invented between 18 along the Kanawha, Muskingum, Conemaugh and Allegheny rivers. The brine was obtained from sands at depths up to 1,000 ft. It was soon found that petroleum was superior to coal as a raw material, but it was a scientific curiosity, occurring in many places, but in small quantities.Īt the same time along the tributaries of the Ohio River a considerable industry had grown up around the manufacture of salt. In the 1850's an industry based on the production of illuminating oil from coal was growing rapidly, and a refining technology utilizing thermal cracking and distillation was well developed. The demand for oil for lubricating the machinery and illuminating the factories had been supplied from tallow and whale oil.
Edwin l drake first american oil well full#
27, 1859, was spectacular and its later history has been colorful and romantic.ĭuring the early part of the last century the industrial revolution was in full swing. Why not, they could afford it.The birth of the oil industry on Aug. This short was the oil industry doing a slick piece of public relations and it is a well produced film. We started to need gasoline in huge quantities. America was going on wheels during the Eisenhower Fifties in fact Ike's main domestic program was the creation of the US Highway system, influenced by what he saw with autobahn in Germany.
We know about that, most recently in the Gulf Of Mexico. Previous to this the stuff would occasionally ooze to the surface, usually in some land that someone was trying to farm and ruin things.
The possibilities of petroleum were known and suspected for years, it was a question of getting it out of the ground. Drake who drilled the first oil well there. A number of name Hollywood players participated in this short subject chief among them Vincent Price who played Edwin L. This short subject produced by the American Petroleum Industry shows just how the oil industry got started in the small northwest Pennsylvania town of Titusville.
0 kommentar(er)
