[Oil Encyclopedia] Notable figures in the history of oil development

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Edwin Drake (1819–1880), Colonel Drake and the pioneer of the world’s oil industry, worked as a farm laborer in farms in New York and Vermont in his youth; he only had a diploma from an ordinary high school. In 1849, he began working as a train attendant on the railroad from New York to New Haven. In the summer of 1857, an illness forced him to leave the railway. Soon, his wife died too. One day, while he was alone in a hotel, he met James Thomson, a shareholder of Seneca Oil Co. Thompson told him about the abundance of oil in Titusville and invited him to join the oil company. With no other choice, Drake agreed and invested the $200 he had in Seneca Petroleum, becoming a shareholder. Drake was appointed as the general agent in Tatesville, with an annual salary of $1,000. In May 1858, Drake arrived in Tatesville. The company sent a letter to the hotel where he was staying, addressed to \"Colonel Drake,\" and from then on people referred to Drake as \"the Colonel.\" A baseless title was thus created. In Titusville, Drake purchased a steam engine with 6 horsepower (about 4413 watts) as a power source; he designed and built the machine room and derrick himself, installed a drilling rig, and hired a few workers to start drilling. The progress of rotary drilling is very slow, with about 1 meter of penetration per day, and the costs incurred have already exceeded the budget. The cost ceiling set by the company’s headquarters in New Haven is $2,500. Thompson instructed him to stop doing this and close the deal. But the persistent Drake borrowed $500 from Midville Bank to continue his drilling operations. August 27, 1859, was a Saturday; by the end of the workday, the drilling had reached a depth of 21 meters. Suddenly, the drill bit dropped by about 15 centimeters, but the drillers paid no attention to this and left their tools to go home for Sunday. The next morning, when the worker came to work, he found that the crude oil in the well had spilled to a level just 2 meters above the ground. Upon hearing this news, Drake was very excited; he installed a steam-powered pump at the wellhead to extract oil, achieving a daily production of 30 barrels (about 4 tons). Word of oil production from the Drake well spread quickly, and refiners flocked to buy crude oil at a high price of $20 per barrel. This was the world’s first oil well drilled by machine and from which oil was extracted using machinery. In just a few years, over 16,000 oil companies emerged in Titusville and its surrounding areas, and the oil drilling boom spread across half of the United States. Therefore, August 27, 1859, is regarded as the birth date of the modern petroleum industry. After that, Drake left Tatesville; he worked as a magistrate and as a petroleum retailer, but was not successful in the petroleum stock market. In his later years, he suffered from various illnesses and led a poor life. In 1873, the Pennsylvania legislature learned of his misfortune and decided to award him an annual salary of $1,500 in recognition of his contributions. In 1880, Drake died. Later, his remains were reburied in Titusville, and a “Drake Well Memorial” was established at the site of the original Drake Well, so that the world may forever remember the contributions of this pioneer of the global oil industry.