The first oil well, drilled near Titusville, Pa., on August 27, 1859, by Col. Edwin L. Drake _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE A temporary oil reservoir in Oklahoma 26 Early activity; the famous Red Hot Oil Field near Shamburg, Pa. 42 Where Pithole stood 43 The Drader Well in the Moreni Field, Roumania 66 Burkburnett in Northern Texas 67 Big yield well in Mexico flowing into temporary storage pond 82 Laying a pipe line through a Louisiana forest 83 Lines for loading oil on vessels standing from one to two miles at sea 98 Battery of crude stills at the Bayway Refinery, Linden, N. J. 99 “Look boxes” in the “Still House” where the grades of oil are separated according to gravity 114 A modern tanker carrying 4,000,000 gallons of oil 115 A tanker being loaded with gasoline and oil at a refinery dock at Port Arthur, Texas 146 Kansas wells flowing oil into a temporary sump, or earthen reservoir 147 Steam stills at a modern refinery 162 Storage tank at Cushing, Oklahoma, struck by lightning 163 THE EVOLUTION OF THE OIL INDUSTRY CHAPTER I PETROLEUM IN HISTORY AND LEGEND While the petroleum industry is in the fullest sense modern, it has been known to, and casually utilized by mankind for centuries. It is named in the earliest annals of the race; and allusions to it are abundant in the literature of the East, from which much of our Western literature had its inspiration. It was applied to the service of religion, and was a subject of superstition in times which are enshrouded in legend. In the authorized Bible and in the Apocrypha there are more than two hundred allusions to it. The legend of Noah speaks of his having used pitch to tighten the seams of his ark, which certainly indicates a familiarity with the uses of fluid bitumen available in the East. In Deuteronomy there is mention of “oil out of the flinty rock;” and Biblical students could cite countless other instances where the meaning clearly indicates a common use of the surface deposits of Western Asia.