The early development of the oil industry in the United States had a lasting world influence: the large American companies expanded overseas taking their business and technical culture with them. In technical terms, the industry s American roots has left its legacy, including for example its units of measurement: the traditional well-casing sizes of 9 ^5/8 and 13 ^3/8 are still in almost universal use as are such colourful drilling terms as roughneck, rat-hole, kelly bushing, not to mention a piece of equipment delightfully known as a Donkey s Dick. But the United States was not by any means the only pioneering oil country. During the last Century, there were already developments in many places including: Baku in Russia; Borneo; Burma; Sumatra; Romania; Poland; Trinidad; Peru; and Mexico. Of these, the most important was Baku on the shores of the Caspian, a backward and poorly administered territory on the southern fringe of the Russian Empire. Oil extracted from hand dug pits had been a state monopoly, but in the early 1870s, the area was opened up to private capital. One of the first entrepreneurs to arrive on the scene was Ludwig Nobel, a member of an inventive Swedish family which made a fortune out of dynamite. It is now remembered by the Nobel Prize, which it endowed.

The world s first tanker, the Zoroaster, was developed by the Nobels to transport oil on the Caspian, in the absence of sufficient oak...