Exploring Across Borders: Geophysics and the Modern Oil Industry

• In Event: Transplantation and Extraction: Oil, Gas, & Seismicity in Brazil, Germany, and the American Midwest

Abstract

Americans discovered vast quantities of oil throughout North America in the early-twentieth century but this story defies national boundaries. Humans have pondered fundamental geophysical questions since antiquity, seeking to understand how sound travels and the origin of earthquakes. The branch of this science known as “exploration geophysics” emerged in the 1920s and resulted in the discovery of most major oil deposits in Texas, Mexico and throughout the world. Continual innovations during the twentieth century further refined the practice of exploration geophysics that serves as the foundation for modern oil exploration. This paper will argue that in the first half of the twentieth century, inventors and practitioners of geophysics formulated ideas and technologies that crossed national boundaries and transformed how oil was found.
The history of geophysical oil exploration took a transnational turn when technology invented in Germany to fight in World War I arrived on the shores of North America. Ludger Mintrop convinced German military leaders that a portable, mechanical seismograph he had invented could locate enemy artillery locations by measuring and recording sound waves emitted by enemies’ guns. After the war, American oil men hired Mintrop and his crews to use the seismograph to search for oil in Oklahoma, Texas, and Mexico. American investors crossed national and intellectual boundaries by soliciting German military technology for use as an oil exploration tool. The success of German exploration crews spawned curiosity among Americans who spied upon them to observe and discover the secrets of this new, arcane technology and craft similar devices that could locate oil by using the same scientific principles. Thus, the modern oil industry may appear monolithic but this paper will show its history consisted of multiple publics with diverse national origins whose competition fueled innovation.

Author

• Brian Frehner, Oklahoma State University