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==Boom…then Bust==
While certainly exciting, those initial wells were modest affairs by today's standards. The oil was still pumped out of the ground each time it was discovered. But 30 months after Drake's first well the world's first "gusher" came in, with oil literally exploding from inside the earth. Production soon spiked to over three million barrels a day from barely half a million barrels. The glut sent prices spiraling for $10 a barrel to 50 cents.<ref>Yergin, Daniel, ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439110123/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1439110123&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=21a0f7a0b3af8bba352e4e953ec2949c The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power]'', (New York: Free Press, 1991).</ref>
The crash ruined speculators, one of whom was Edwin Drake. George Bissell held on through the crisis and emerged a wealthy man when prices rebounded and new uses for petroleum were discovered. Drake also had never bothered to patent his oil drilling technique. He spent the last years of his life reduced to writing friends to beg for money. In 1873, as he lived out his final days in infirmity, the state of Pennsylvania eased his troubles by issuing him a small lifetime pension in recognition of his contributions to the development of Keystone State industry.
As it turned out, Drake had been extremely lucky in choosing his drilling spot on a small island in Oil Creek. If he had sunk his iron pipe just a few feet to the left or to the right it would have required another 100 feet of perseverance and funding to strike oil. But the question of whether Edwin Drake had enough remaining of either does not need to be asked.
While others around him were cashing in fortunes after his discovery on Oil Creek, Drake was more concerned with securing his legacy in some of his last writings: "I claim that I did invent the driving Pipe and drive it and without that they could not bore on bottom lands when the earth is full of water. And I claim to have bored the first well that ever was bored for the Petroleum in America and can show the well. If I had not done it, it would have not been done to this day.”<ref>Yergin, Daniel, ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439110123/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1439110123&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=21a0f7a0b3af8bba352e4e953ec2949c The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power]'', (New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 26.</ref>
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