Unfortunately the company did not have the foresight to recognize that heavier capacity machines would eventually be needed and thus lost their initial advantage.
The Wood & Mann steam engine apparatus made in Utica, New York, was among the first to be used in the Appalachian shallow oil region. His brother, Allen Nelson Wood, made steam engines in his own right (the A.N.
EDWIN L DRAKE INVENTION PORTABLE
This make of portable boiler and engine was used considerably in the first decade of the Pennsylvania boom.Īdvertised as a "celebrated" make, the firm of Wood & Mann was located in Utica, New York, and it was Enos D. They mounted their engine directly on top of the boiler, a style which had become customary. One of the brands sold by agents was the Wood & Mann make. The Atlas contains four illustrated advertisements of portable steam engines and boilers for oil drilling purposes. Beers et al published the Atlas of the Oil Region of Pennsylvania. That field was discovered in late 1859, a few months after Drake's first well on Oil Creek. Wood of Eaton, New York, was the first steam engine to be used in the Franklin, Pennsylvania, field, probably 1860. Drake is present in the replica of the engine house on the grounds of the Drake Well Museum.Īn early 4 HP portable model by A.N. This working reproduction of the type of steam engine used by Col. It cost $500.00 at the factory according to an August 16, 1858, letter by Drake. The engine is thought to have been made by the Erie City Iron Works, Erie, Pennsylvania. Drake and his driller, Billy Smith, installed a 6 HP Long John engine and a stationary boiler in what became the engine house of the Drake cable-tool drilling operation. Drake in his famous 1859 well near Titusville. Even some of the coins in circulation in Drake's day were stamped at the mint by an automated steam press.Īppropriately the first use of steam power in oil well drilling in America was by Edwin L. Steam hammers made some of the fittings and parts of the drilling paraphernalia. Pipelines commenced to use steam pumps in 1865.
Steam locomotives of various railroads were bringing trains to the oil region and hauling away oil and refined product in wooden tanks mounted on flat cars beginning 1865 (and oil in barrels before that). The oil industry's need for steam power in the 1860's wasn't based solely on drilling or pumping oil wells but also for refineries and even for river vessels that transported oil and products from Oil Creek to Pittsburgh and returned with oilfield supplies. In fact, steam hadn't been used for drilling in the earlier salt well days until perhaps the 1840's (Brantly, 1971) and probably not much even then because the spring pole and the treadle were the main devices in use. The sudden boom of the oil industry caught the steam people somewhat by surprise.
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