This cast iron pipe consisted of ten foot long joints. It was at this point that he devised the idea of a drive pipe. At 16 feet (5 m) the sides of the hole began to collapse. It took some time for the drillers to get through the layers of gravel. The well was dug on an artificial island on the Oil Creek. When attempts to dig huge shafts in the ground failed due to water seepage, Drake decided to drill in the manner of salt drillers. This was not enough to make a commercial yield sustainable. He had limited success, but was only able to extract a maximum of 10 barrels (1.6 m³) per day. In 1857 and again in 1858 Drake searched for oil in and around Titusville. He used an old steam engine to power the drill. Drake decided that the best way to find oil was to dig for it.
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The oil company chose the retired railway man partly because he had free use of the rail. Then, in the late 1850’s Edwin Drake was hired by the Seneca Oil Company to investigate suspected oil deposits in Titusville, Pennsylvania.
Drake, a native of Greene County, New York, had spent his earlier life working as a clerk, an express agent, and a railway conductor on a brand new sometimes dangerous conveyance railroad.
While petroleum oil was known prior to this, it was not available in large enough quantities to be very useful.Īccording to Ida Tarbell's 1904 book The History of Standard Oil, the oil well was not Drake's idea, but rather that of his employer, George Bissell.īissell sent Drake to the site in the spring of 1858. On August 27, 1859, a well that Drake built near Titusville, Pennsylvania struck oil. He was born in Greenville, New York on March 11, 1819. Edwin Laurentine "Colonel" Drake ( 1819- 1880), an American oil driller, is popularly credited with having "discovered" oil.
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