Technology
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CONTINENTAL REFINING COMPANY / CONTINENTAL OIL REFINING COMPANY
“Continental Oil Refinery - This company is owned by the Anderton Estate. It has still capacity of one thousand barrels daily, manufacturing all the products obtainable from Pennsylvania crude oil, and gives employment to from forty to fifty men.
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VENANGO PORTABLE DRILLING MACHINE COMPANY/ OIL CITY WOOD WORKING MANUFACTURING COMPANY
It is thoroughly practical, very simple and easy to operate.
“It is light and easily moved - one team can move it from one location to another under ordinary circumstances.
“The Derrick rests on the machine, between the bull wheels, this giving the derrick its full strength and the machine rigidity…. -
WAX and ASPHALT CRUDE OILS
Petroleum crude is infinitely complex and varied. The character of crude oil depends on where it is found. Crude oil found in Pennsylvania and nearby West Virginia and Southeastern Ohio is a paraffinic crude oil, or commonly termed wax-based.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Kerosense - Gasoline
For fifty-five years, 1859 – 1914, kerosene in terms of volume manufactured as well as total value was the leading refined product of the American petroleum industry. Throughout the last four decades of the nineteenth century, kerosene was used by both the American consumer and those in Europe as an illuminant in lamps. American refiners actually exported more of their kerosene to Europe than what was consumed at home. In this country, kerosene competed with manufactured gas and, where available, natural gas as a source of light in nineteenth century homes.