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Progress

  • Categories: Essays, Progress

    PRODUCTS FROM PETROLEUM

    Since the early days of the petroleum industry in the 1860’s through present times, a nearly countless list of distinct petroleum derived products have been discovered or created by man.

  • Categories: Essays, People, Progress, Technology

    SAMUEL KIER (1813-1874) – GIVING OIL COMMERCIAL VALUE

    Samuel Kier was the first to give crude petroleum a sustained market value when in 1848 he packaged pure crude oil from Tarentum area salt wells in half-pint bottles for sale as a medicine. A half-pint bottle of Kier's Petroleum, or Kier's Rock Oil, sold for 50 cents.

  • Categories: Essays, People, Progress, Technology

    PENNSYLVANIA OIL INDUSTRY AND EARLY AVIATION

    Oil “fueled” the development of aviation. This fact was noted by Daniel Yergin in The Prize (1991). “When the Wright Brothers airplane first flew into the air at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903, its engine burned gasoline and lubricants that had been brought to the beach in wooden barrels and blue tin cans by salesman from Standard Oil.”

  • Categories: Essays, Progress

    The 42 Gallon Barrel [History]

    As crude prices hit record highs, questions arise over barrel measurement [history]

  • Categories: Essays, Progress, Technology

    Three Fabulous Decades

    The decades from 1900 to 1930 were the period of accelerated development for the petroleum industry. Accelerated development is when improvements multiply, prices are reduced, new markets are tapped, and the industry swiftly expands.

  • Categories: Essays, Progress

    Oil Strategy in World War II

    The Allies hastened their victory by crippling German synthetic gasoline capacity and by severing Japan’s precarious supply lines.

  • Categories: Essays, People, Places, Progress

    Galena Oil

    Galena Oil manufactured in Franklin rose from humble beginnings in the 1860s to lubricate all the railroads in the United States and Canada, 75 percent of the South American railroads, 29 percent of the street railways in the United States and a large percentage of the rail lines in Europe.

  • Categories: Essays, Places, Progress, Technology

    Nitroglycerine Saved Many Wells

    Less than a year after the first oil well was drilled in northwestern Pennsylvania, well owners had trouble. Paraffin was the culprit. Petroleum in this region is rich in the waxy substance and it was clogging the underground flow of oil. The producers were an ingenious lot and they quickly set out to find a solution.

  • Categories: Essays, Places, Progress

    Franklin Heavy Crude

    The oil business was still in its infancy when producers started to notice a difference in the petroleum they were pumping. In Franklin where traces of that “nasty Seneca oil” had crept into water wells along French Creek, the success of Colonel Edwin L. Drake’s well was quick to spawn interest.

  • Categories: Essays, Places, Progress

    Eclipse Refinery

    The Eclipse Refinery, located near Franklin, was reported at one time to be the “largest refinery in the world.” While this claim is frequently contested it is known that the refinery turned out every petroleum product known at the time and that it was an important part of the Venango County economy for 65 years.

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