To Patent or Not to Patent - Early Oil in Pennsylvania

Edwin Drake, (inventor and oil industry pioneer) was hired by the Seneca Oil Company to investigate suspected oil deposits in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Oil in the area was causing problems for salt well drillers because of the contamination factor to their product. The oil company chose Drake, a retired railway man partly because he had free use of the rail which meant he could travel the area at no expense to them. They tacked a phony “Colonel” title in front of his name to give him some respect and authority and sent him prospecting. Native Americans had long been aware of crude oil and used it as “black medicine” for sprains and cuts. They also found it effective in driving away flies. They called it “antonotons” meaning “Oh, how much there is!” Even early settlers tried to make use of crude but quickly learned it would not work in their oil lamps. Because it burned with a black smoke and smelled horribly, it was basically not fit for anything. Eventually, someone discovered a way to process out the impurities making it usable in oil lamps and for other more genteel uses. Nothing like a good bottle of (snake oil) for what ails you. The ability to process the crude oil caused an “ah ha” moment for James Townsend, the President of Seneca Oil, and he decided it was time to get that crude out of the ground. His plans were to extract, process, sell and get rich! Edwin Drake settled on Oil Creek as a drilling site and decided to drill in the manner of the salt well drillers. He purchased a steam engine in Erie, Pennsylvania, to power the drill and began digging on an island. It took quite some time for the drillers to get through the many layers of gravel. At 16 feet, the sides of the hole began to collapse and those helping him began to despair, but not Drake. It was at this point he devised the idea of a drive pipe. This cast iron pipe consisted of 10-foot-long joints that were driven down into the ground. At 32 feet they struck, bedrock. Drilling tools were lowered through the pipe and steam was used to drill through the bedrock. The going was slow at a rate of just three feet per day. All the difficulty associated with the process resulted in the well being dubbed "Drake's Folly." Crowds gathered to jeer at the apparently unproductive operation which was also going broke. Seneca Oil had abandoned Drake, leaving him to rely on friends to back the enterprise. On August 27, the drill bit had reached a total depth of 69.5 feet, hit a crevice and the crew packed up for the day. The next morning Drake’s driller, Billy Smith, looked into the hole in preparation for another day’s work. He was surprised and delighted to see crude oil rising up in the hole. Drake was summoned and the oil was brought to the surface with a hand operated pitcher pump from a local kitchen and collected in a bath tub. Previous methods for collecting oil had been limited. Ground collection of oil consisted of gathering it from natural occurrences, such as oil seeps or shallow holes dug into the ground. Alternative methods of digging large shafts into the ground also failed, as collapse from water seepage almost always occurred. Drake is now famous for pioneering a new method for producing oil from the ground by using pipe to prevent borehole collapse. The principle behind this idea is still employed today by many companies drilling for hydrocarbons. Unfortunately, Drake failed to patent his drilling invention. Subsequently, after losing all his money in oil speculation, the state of Pennsylvania voted an annuity of $1,500 to the “crazy man” who founded the oil industry. Edwin Drake died in 1880, impoverished after pioneering an industry that made others fabulously wealthy.