FT MAGAZINE 
One of the most profound changes to our way of life was the consequence of a modest share purchase made by a Connecticut railroad conductor 150 years ago.
Edwin Laurentine Drake, a colourful character who later liked to be known as Colonel, chose the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of Titusville in which to make his investment. The company’s business was gathering oil from seepages and distributing it for medicinal purposes.
Drake (pictured centre) had more ambitious ideas. Although initially he had thought of digging for oil, it soon occurred to him that there would be far greater profit in using a more aggressive method of acquisition. Accordingly, he leased land from Pennsylvania Rock and took a correspondence course in the way salt wells were drilled. He then negotiated with the company to implement his theory that the methods used for drilling for salt could apply to oil.
Drake’s instincts were proved right. In August 1859, not long after the bits started turning, Drake struck oil at a depth of 69ft, earning himself the accolade of being the first oil driller in the world and thus the founder of the vast petroleum industry. His methods spread from Titusville to other Pennsylvania townships – which overnight became boom towns. Unfortunately for him, Drake neglected to patent his drills and before long became impoverished – although an appreciative state legislature later granted him a pension.
Across the US, the response was that oil was there, therefore oil must be used. A host of oil-based industries was created: oil for illumination, oil for cooking, oil for heating. But what was to become the paramount user of oil was not invented until the following year, when in a French laboratory an uncontrollably noisy, vibrating, brutal piece of equipment roared and backfired and strained like some sort of monster at its metal anchors.
The horse, mainstay of mankind’s transport for thousands of years, was about to be superseded by something immeasurably more powerful. The internal combustion engine had arrived.
