Finding Oil: The Nature of Petroleum Geology, 1859-1920

5. Geology Organized: Henry L. Doherty's Technological System

143 If Charles Gould used public institutions to professionalize petroleum geologists, Henry L. Doherty exercised private power to advance their professional status by hiring them in his various oil and gas enterprises. Gould’s and Doherty’s actions demonstrated that the organizational changes occurring in American society throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries took place in both the private and public sectors.1 In the private sector business ventures in the chemical, electrical , and oil industries began to organize into large economies of scale. Standard Oil Company epitomized this push for consolidation in its very name and in its business practices, but initially John D. Rockefeller focused the company’s efforts on refining, marketing, distribution, and transportation and left the task of locating oil to others. By the early twentieth century the Supreme Court declared Standard Oil an illegal monopoly and broke up the trust, thereby complicating its ability to access the southern plains states, which collectively provided the majority of the world’s oil supply.2 Standard’s absence from the region as a monopoly created a vacuum that Doherty and others eagerly filled. Doherty recognized the utility of geologists in systematically prospecting for oil and gas and hired them in large numbers to staff his various oil and gas enterprises. Doherty’s act completed the industry’s vertical integration that Rockefeller had initiated and won for geologists more authority, legitimacy, and credibility within the industry. Geology Organized henry l. doherty’s technological system 5 geology organized 144 Doherty’s greatest innovation lay not just in hiring geologists but in his capacity to function as a system-builder.3 The term “systembuilder ” characterizes an innovator who possesses the instincts and mentality of an inventor, engineer, industrial scientist, manager, and entrepreneur.4 Doherty functioned in all these capacities and fashioned in his Cities Service Holding Company a system of corporate entities with petroleum geologists and engineers as integral members used to locate oil as efficiently and expeditiously as possible and to conduct research into the mechanics of petroleum reservoirs in order to maximize their yield. In a technological system an invention functions as more than simply utilitarian hardware but reflects the context of the people and organization who produce it.5 Thus Doherty created a context for material and intellectual innovations to produce oil that consisted of technology, ideas, and people. He hired university-trained geologists and engineers from nearby universities and the usgs to 27. This memorial sketch of Henry L. Doherty casts him in heroic iconography as the builder of a vast technological system comprised of oil derricks, refineries, electricity transmission stations, and other infrastructure. Courtesy of Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries. geology organized 145 innovate alongside craftsmen and technicians. Technological systems often possessed regional styles because of the close proximity of natural resources necessary to make the system function.6 Doherty built his technological system on the southern plains by conjoining oil prospecting and production technology with the region’s enormous stores of oil resources. His efforts added legitimacy to the profession of petroleum geology and provided an impetus to the emergence of another new specialty, petroleum engineering, which was aimed at maximizing efficiency. developer of men Doherty perfectly fit the image of a Horatio Alger hero, and the story of his success so captivated those who heard it that they often attributed Cities Service’s accomplishments to him alone, even though many 28. One of many Cities Service gas stations that represented Henry L. Doherty’s effort to consolidate control over the production, distribution, and marketing of oil-based fuel. Courtesy of Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries. 29. Henry L. Doherty. Courtesy of Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries. geology organized 147 other employees also deserved credit for the company’s innovations. One senior-level employee, Everett Carpenter, expressed awe at his boss’s remarkable rise to success: “The story of Henry L. Doherty is a Horatio Alger story that outshines all the Horatio Alger stories at their best.”7 Although the rise of Cities Service owed much to Doherty’s engineering genius, he exhibited perhaps even greater brilliance in devising programs to train and educate his work force. He hoped to cultivate innovators like himself who could craft technical solutions to problems the company encountered. Doherty declared, “If I am ever known for anything I would prefer to be known as a man who could develop...