Sketches in Crude-oil: Some accidents and incidents of the petroleum development in all parts of the globeMcLaurin, John J. (John James)
History
Sketches in Crude-oil: Some accidents and incidents of the petroleum development in all parts of the globe
McLaurin, John J. (John James)
Petroleum -- History; Petroleum industry and trade -- North America -- History
The first oil-well drilled by steam power was opposite Tidioute, in
1860.
Jonathan Watson put down the first deep well on Oil Creek—2,130 feet—in
1866.
William Phillips boated the first cargo of oil down the Allegheny to
Pittsburg in March, 1860.
The Chinese were the first to drill with tools attached to ropes, which
they twisted from rattan.
The Liverpool Lamp, devised by an unknown Englishman, was the first to
have a glass-chimney and do away with smoke.
The first tubing in oil-wells was manufactured at Pittsburg, with brass
screw-joints soldered on the pipe, the same as at Tarentum salt-wells.
The first steamboat reached the mouth of Oil Creek in 1828, with a load
of Pittsburgers. The first train crossed Oil Creek into Oil City on a
track on the ice.
William A. Smith, who drilled the Drake well, made the first rimmer.
While enlarging a well with a bit the point broke off, after which
greater progress was noted. The accident suggested the rimmer.
The first white settler in the Pennsylvania oil-regions was John
Frazier, who built a cabin at Wenango—Franklin—in 1745, kept a gun-shop
and traded with the Indians until driven off by the French in 1753, the
year of George Washington’s visit.
Jonathan Titus located at Titusville in 1797, on land made famous by the
Drake well. In that year the first oil skimmed from Oil Creek to be
marketed was sold at Pittsburg, then a collection of log-cabins, at
_sixteen dollars a gallon_! Now people kick at half that many cents for
the refined article.
Early well-owners found the tools and fuel, paid all expenses but labor
and paid three-dollars-and-fifty-cents per foot to the contractor, yet
so many contractors failed that a lien-law was passed. George Koch, in
November of 1873, took out a patent on fluted drills, which did away
with the rimmer, reduced the time of drilling a well from sixty days to
twenty and reduced the price from three dollars per foot to fifty cents.
Sam Taft was the first to use a line to control the engine from the
derrick, at a well near McClintockville, in 1867. Henry Webber was the
first to regulate the motion of the engine from the derrick. He drilled
a well near Smoky City, on the Porter farm, in 1863, with a rod from the
derrick to the throttle-valve. He also dressed the tools, with the forge
in the derrick, perhaps the first time this was done. He drilled this
well six-hundred feet with no help. Near this well was the first
plank-derrick in the oil-country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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