This imitation greenback was destined to influence the course of history. A prominent New Haven business man of the day was Mr. George H. Bissell, who had become interested in the possibilities of petroleum through his acquaintanceship with Prof. Crosby of Dartmouth College. The latter had received from a physician at Titusville, Pa., a historical city in connection with the coming industry, a bottle of petroleum, sent as a curiosity. Bissell was so interested that he, in company with friends, purchased for $5,000 a tract of one hundred acres at Titusville, with an oil spring on it. A company was founded, known as the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, with a nominal capital of $500,000 and a tentative start made at collecting the surface oil by digging and trenching. Prof. B. Silliman, of New Haven, made a favourable report on the fluid as an illuminant but the cost of production rendered the project commercially impracticable. Mr. Bissell was, therefore, left with the Titusville property on his hands. The story runs that one day in the summer of 1857 while in New York he saw in the window of a Broadway drug store one of Kier’s imitation greenbacks, showing the picture of the derricks at Tarentum, Pa. The idea suddenly came to him of developing the Titusville property just as salt properties were developed by boring and pumping. Though short of capital, he set about obtaining backing for the attempt, and the final outcome was that a small syndicate was formed in New Haven, Conn., to work the Titusville oil lands. This syndicate engaged Edwin Laurencine Drake, the most historic figure in connection with the beginning of the American industry, to carry out the work. How he set about his task, and how he succeeded will be the subject of a subsequent chapter. It is necessary to point out that unless the foundations had already been laid for refining and marketing the crude petroleum, Drake’s discovery would have been almost as valueless as that in 1818, which resulted in the conflagration on the Cumberland River. Science, however, had been grappling with the problem of extracting from the crude a safe burning oil and eliminating the offensive odour. This latter was a very important consideration, and for years after petroleum began to assume the proportions of a large industry it encountered prejudice on this account. By the later ’fifties so much progress had been made that the possibilities had been created not merely for a large domestic trade in oil, but also for the development of an export market. Drake’s discoveries at Titusville in August, 1859, may, therefore, be said to have come at the psychological moment. CHAPTER IV FOUNDER OF THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY