Time was when the engineering aspect of the production of petroleum was practically non-existent. The ancients, and even those of the last century, were content to resort to the most primitive means for winning petroleum from the earth. Shallow wells were sunk or dug by hand, the eventual securing of the oil being carried out by lowering primitive receptacles (generally leather bottles) into the hole. It was a period long before the advent of the Oil Age, and the methods employed were clearly in keeping with the mode of life of that day. In practically every oil-producing field of the world--though in this respect the United States is almost an exception--the history records the fact that for many years the extraction of oil from the ground was confined to the use of the primitive methods which held sway in those days--those associated with the operations of the hand-dug wells. In the Far East, notably in Japan, we find the first serious attempts to obtain and utilize petroleum, for as far back as A.D. 615, there were shallow wells in existence, from which the “burning water,” as it was called, was collected. In Roumania and Russia, too, the earlier attempts to create a petroleum industry were confined to these methods. It was only when the demand for petroleum became large and consistently increased with the opening up of new fields, that we find other and more practical methods were introduced for winning larger quantities of the oil from the earth. To-day, in every branch of the industry associated with petroleum--whether it be in producing the crude oil, in transporting it, or in refining Nature’s product into those numerous commodities which are part and parcel of everyday life--the engineering aspect is one of very great importance. In fact, throughout the petroleum industry, engineering science is the Alpha and Omega. By its means we are now able to carefully study the nature of the ground at depths of 6,000 feet, and to extract from the deep lying strata a wealth of minerals; we are able, too, to transport thousands of tons of crude oil daily across thousands of miles of continent, while is it not the direct result of engineering science which allows over 15,000 tons of petroleum products to be carried across the oceans of the world in one vessel with the same ease that one would take a rowing boat from one side of a lake to another? Great, however, as have been the degrees of progress recorded in connection with drilling for petroleum, the old methods, generally speaking, and which date back to the days of early China, are still largely copied in all pole and percussion systems of drilling, and though steam has replaced manual labour (and electricity now bids fair to replace steam), the operating principles to-day are the same as then. The only exception, of course, is the advent and growing popularity of the rotary method of drilling, to which interesting phase of the subject I will briefly refer later.