Note 2 — CHAPTER ONE THE BIRTH OF AN INDUSTRY

An elastic pole of ash or hickory, twelve to twenty feet long, was fastened at one end to work over a fulcrum. To the other end stirrups were attached, or a tilting platform was secured, by which two or three men produced a jerking motion that drew down the pole, its elasticity pulling it back with sufficient force, when the men slackened their hold, to raise the tools a few inches. The principle resembled that of the treadle-board of a sewing machine, operating which moves the needle up and down. The tools were swung in the driving pipe, or the “conductor”—a wooden tube eight or ten inches square, placed endwise in a hole dug to the rock—and fixed by a rope to the spring pole, two or three feet from the workmen. The strokes were rapid, and a sand pump—a spout three inches in diameter, with a hinged bottom opening inward and a valve working on a sliding rod, somewhat in the manner of a syringe—removed the borings mainly by sucking them into the spout as it was drawn out quickly. McLaurin’s “History of Petroleum.”