On this day in 1942, while the nation was embroiled in the Second World War, a quiet revolution in oil and gas production began. At the time the country was desperate for fuel – for ships, tanks, airplanes, trucks, and everything that the War Department was moving around the globe.
Thanks to a man named Charles “Wes” Tyson and three of his colleagues, working for the Exxon corporation, yields of oil and gas were about to take off, thanks to their new process, fluid catalytic fracking, with the first such operation starting up on May 25th, 1942.
Charles “Wes” Tyson and his three co-inventors at Exxon Research & Engineering Co. (ER&E), called the Four Horsemen, were part of the team responsible for developing fluid catalytic cracking, the process that produces over half the world’s gasoline. They developed the process in 1942, and the first commercial fluid…
