CHARACTEEISTICS OF FIEST EPOCH 175 



duction and transportation of petroleum. It was during this period that 

 methods for deep drilling were perfected, and the fields of Pennsylvania 

 especially were exploited and further developed, the extensions into Ohio 

 and West Virginia not spreading far from the original developments. 

 Transportation of oil through pipe lines and tank cars was introduced 

 during this epoch, and refining methods were also extended and im- 

 proved, while very large gas wells were incidentally discovered in drilling 

 for petroleum. 



It was near the close of this period (1883) that the Standard Oil 

 Trust was formed, and it became the chief agent in promoting a world- 

 wide market for American petroleum and its many refinery products. 



Characteristics of the second Epoch 



The next 20-year epoch of petroleum and natural gas history, be- 

 ginning with 1883, was noteworthy in many respects. It marked the 

 rise of the natural gas industry and the general introduction of gaseous 

 fuel into domestic use throughout the petroleum fields, as Avell as its 

 greatly extended use in the manufacturing industry. It was in 1883 

 that Spang, Chalfant & Company and Graff, Bennett & Company laid 

 a six-inch pipe line from their iron works on the Allegheny Eiver to a 

 large gas well in Butler County, Pennsylvania, and, turning the same 

 into the line, found that the rock pressure of the gas was able to force 

 a large supply through to their factories, sufficient to take care of all 

 their fuel needs in the smelting of billets and the manufacture of iron 

 into the many forms of finished product. This successful experiment 

 in the long-distance transportation of natural gas through its own 

 expansive power rapidly led to a vast extension of pipe lines, and the 

 natural gas industry had its birth. 



It was the desire of capital to enter this field in an intelligent manner 

 that led one great oil corporation (the Forest Oil Company, a sub- 

 sidiary of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey) to seek the advice 

 of your speaker, who, as the result of his field-work, discovered anew 

 the neglected and forgotten "Anticlinal Theory" of Hunt, Andrews, 

 and Hoeffer, which he vitalized and regenerated for all time. Before 

 this rediscovery, in June, 1882, and its later publication in "Science," 

 the finding of new oil and gas pools in the United States beyond the 

 boundaries of Pennsylvania, southern New York, southeastern Ohio, and 

 the Volcano arch of West A-^irginia had made practically no progress. 



Many wells, it is=i true, had been drilled in other States, but nothing 

 of importance had resulted therefrom, since there was no consistent 



