Friday, August 28, 2009

150 years of oil industry

Pic: Drake's Well & Edwin Drake

The Date: 27th August, 1859
The Place: Titusville, Pennysylvania, USA
The Man: Edwin Drake
The Event: Oil struck at a depth of 69 feet. The first ever producing oil well is drilled leading to the birth of the oil industry.
This has to be one on the most impotant discoveries in the history of mankind. Without this natural energy resource, the entire industrial revolution and the technological advancement of the past one and a half centuries would not have taken place. Just imagine a world without oil. We would probably still have been living in the middle ages. The discovery of underground crude oil reserves would surely rank alongside mankind's greatest discoveries, like fire, agriculture, the wheel, written language etc. And over the last 150 years it has been the one industry with the maximum impact on the geopolitics and the global economy.
As the indutry celebrates 150 years of its existence, I salute the man who made it all possible. Col. Edwin Drake, hats off to you sir. After all that single discovery of you has had a very powerful impact on what I am today.

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