Everette Lee DeGolyer and Geology Students Mapping in the Arbuckle Mountains, Oklahoma, 1905

[View Cover Image]

The image on this month's cover shows several University of Oklahoma (OU) geology students on a field expedition in 1905, applying classroom lessons to vistas outside the classroom. Using simple tools including a plane table, a leveling instrument, and a vertical stick (out of frame), these students in Oklahoma's Arbuckle Mountains, fifty miles north of the Oklahoma—Texas border, were probably engaged in contact-point mapping. In contact-point mapping, surveyors aim to map the points in the region where different rock types (sandstone, shale, limestone, and so on) visibly come into contact with one another. In 1905 field trips like these were more than mere exercises; not only were the Arbuckles as yet poorly mapped, but they also provided a unique location where the geological substructure of the oil-rich state could be visualized and recorded for use by Oklahoma's booming oil industry. Knowing the nature of the subterranean rock (visible on the surface in the Arbuckles) made oil drilling more predictable and efficient.

We chose this image for the cover of the first issue of Technology and Culture produced entirely by the new editorial team at OU because the story of the image resonates with the notion of new beginnings. For OU, the field trip was sponsored by the then-young Department of Geology, marking the beginning of its identity as a leading (and at the time, the only) center for applying the science of geology to the problems of oil prospecting and drilling in the booming, oil-rich state.¹ For geology students, field trips like these were a shared experience of new beginnings, as they worked through a rite of passage into the professional world. For Everette DeGolyer, this humble field trip launched an impressive career as an oil businessman, a scientist and innovator in geophysics, and a leading patron of the study of the history of science and technology in the United States. For T&C, DeGolyer's successful career, no more than hoped for at the time of this photo, and his wider interests and passions would ultimately play an important role in bringing the journal to OU.

Everette Lee DeGolyer (right) and fellow geology students mapping the Arbuckle Mountains, Oklahoma, 1905. (Source: Photograph courtesy of the Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma.)

Born to John William and Narcissa Kagy Huddle DeGolyer in 1886, young Everette Lee first found himself in Norman, Oklahoma, at the start of the century. As an amateur mineral prospector, Everette's father had looked to capitalize on the many Oklahoma land-runs that began in 1889, ultimately securing the rights to settle on land originally belonging to the Kiowa tribe of Native Americans.² Possibly driven by his father's lack of "boom" success in this "boom or bust" period, Everette enrolled in OU in 1904, working odd jobs to pay his tuition as he studied under Charles Gould in the geology department. Promises of making their fortune through geological training attracted many students to the university during this period.³ In 1906, at the behest of Gould, DeGolyer began a three-year summer excursion working for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana. Starting out as a camp cook, he eventually worked his way up to field assistant. The chief geologist for the USGS, Charles Willard Hayes, was impressed enough with DeGolyer that he offered him a job in Tampico, Mexico. Temporarily leaving his studies behind, DeGolyer headed a geological expedition for the Mexican Eagle Oil Company in 1909. During the trip, he located one of the world's largest oil fields, prospecting and building the well-site at Portrero del Liana (no. 4) and subsequently amassing a fortune. Two years later, in 1911, DeGolyer returned to OU to finish his degree. Now the richest student on campus, he had no more need of odd jobs.⁴ Upon graduation he would become a leader in the oil business, maintaining a particular interest in innovative technologies...