1859

First industrial oil drilling

Edwin L. Drake, recruited by the Seneca Oil Company, drilled for oil in Pennsylvania by adapting the tech­nique used in the salt mines. In reality, such drilling had already been done a few years ago, in par­ticular in Romania and Germany. And even, as early as 1594, in the region of Baku, now the capital of Azerbaijan, 35-​​meter deep wells had been dug to extract oil. But Edwin L. Drake’s oil drilling marks the start of a « black gold rush » and the emer­gence of a proper oil industry.