Rockefeller focused on efficiency and growth for his new company. Not long after forming the Standard Oil Company in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1870, John D. The 42-gallon standard oil barrel was officially adopted by the Petroleum Producers Association in 1872 and by the U.S. Within a year of Drake’s discovery, oil barrels were commonly considered to hold 42 gallons according to “The Oil Fountains of Pennsylvania” in Littells’ Living Age of September 1860.īy 1866, these abundant tierce-sized barrels were the logical choice to become the industry’s standard measure. Twenty would fit on a typical barge or railroad flatcar. Bigger casks were unmanageable and smaller were less profitable.Ĭontemporary photographs show cooperages’ prodigious response to the new demand. When filled with crude oil instead of fish or other commodities, a 42-gallon tierce weighed more than 300 pounds – about as much as a man could reasonably wrestle. The petroleum boom that followed it consumed wooden tierces, whiskey barrels, casks and barrels of all sizes. Drake ’s 1859 oil discovery at Titusville PA., the first commercial U.S. The 42-gallon barrels became familiar 19th century containers. Standard Oil will introduce a steel version of the 42-gallon oil barrel in 1902 with the same traditional bilged, cask-like appearance.īy around 1700 in Pennsylvania, practical experience and custom had made the 42-gallon watertight tierce a standard container for shipping everything from eel, salmon, herring, molasses, soap, butter, wine and whale oil. Technologies for making watertight casks replaced “tight” coopers and their guild of Worshipful Company of Coopers. Their guild, the Worshipful Company of Coopers, prescribed the manner of construction. Lesser skilled craftsmen (known as slack coopers) made casks, barrels, and pails for dry goods. Long before England’s King Richard III defined the wine puncheon as a cask holding 84 gallons and a tierce as holding 42 gallons, watertight casks of many sizes were crafted by “tight” coopers. Hoop mills operated day and night supporting cooperages that sprang up to join in the oil boom in what would later be called “the valley that changed the world.” Meanwhile, as derricks multiplied, forests along Oil Creek were reduced to barrel staves by recently introduced barrel-making machinery. Rugged northwestern Pennsylvania terrain and muddy roads added to transportation problems. To reach railroad station and docks, teams of horses pulled wagons carrying as many as eight barrels of oil. Although pipelines would later challenge the oil region’s teamsters, the business of moving oil depended mostly on men, wagons, horses, flatboats, and barrels. Pennsylvania led the world in oil production as demand for kerosene soared. In August 1866 a handful of America’s earliest independent oil producers met in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and agreed that henceforth, 42 gallons would constitute a barrel of oil. Today, a barrel’s refined products include about 20 gallons of gasoline, 12 gallons of diesel and 4 gallons of jet fuel and other products like liquefied petroleum gases and asphalt. The 42-gallon oil barrel was officially adopted in 1866. When filled with oil instead of fish or other commodities, a 42-gallon “tierce” weighed 300 pounds. The 42-gallon standard was adopted by the Petroleum Producers Association in 1872. Soon after America’s first oil discovery in 1859, oilmen met in northwestern Pennsylvania and decided a 42-gallon barrel was best for transporting oil.īy the 1860s, barges floated barrels of oil down the Allegheny River to Pittsburgh to be refined into a highly demanded product – kerosene for lamps.
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