Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin Laurentine Drake & The Early Oil Industry - Brice

MYTH, LEGEND, REALITY: EDWIN LAURENTINE DRAKE AND THE EARLY OIL INDUSTRY. 2009 by William R. Brice. August 27, 1859, is one of those dates on which the world changed. On that day, a drill bit broke into a thin sandstone layer sixty-nine and a half feet below the surface and a mixture of oil and water rose to the surface. Edwin Drake's quest to find oil by drilling was a success, and the modern oil and gas industry took a giant leap forward. Today petroleum and natural gas, and the multitude of products derived from them, touch our lives everyday in more ways than we can image, but practically everything we buy, touch, or consume is in some way connected to petroleum. The most obvious contribution of petroleum has been the revolution in transportation, a revolution that has brought our world, for better or worse, so much closer together than ever before in human history. Telling the story of the early exploitation of petroleum, this well illustrated book chronicles the lives of some of the men who were midwives at the birth of the modern oil industry. Prominent among them is Edwin Drake, who, to use a 21st century business term, was the project manager on the first successful attempt to find oil by drilling a well. It was Drake's personality, perseverance, and good old Yankee ingenuity, that kept the project alive in the face of public derision, failing finances, and even abandonment by the very company that sent him into the wilds of western Pennsylvania. 661 pages, 7 1/4 x 10 1/2" Hardbound