Petroleum Anniversary

More than 100 leaders in the oil industry, business and academic circles are expected to attend the ceremony which will be held by the College on June 26, when it celebrates the centennial anniversary of the world's first scientific examination of crude oil. A memorial tablet will be unveiled at Crosby Hall, where the first test took place in 1853 under the direction of two Dartmouth professors: Dr. Dixi Crosby and Oliver B. Hubbard. It was as the result of their favorable verdict that this strange, black liquid contained useful and potentially valuable properties that the world's first oil company was formed and eventually the first commercial oil well drilled at Titusville, Pa.

Dr. Paul H. Giddens, president of Hamline University, St. Paul, Minn., and one of the country's foremost authorities on the early history and development of oil, will give the dedicatory address at the white, pillared building which Dr. Crosby used as his home and laboratory a century ago. This will take place in mid-afternoon.

Douglas McKay, Secretary of the Interior in the Eisenhower Cabinet, is expected to speak briefly at a memorial dinner to be held in the evening. Colonel J. Frank Drake '02, chairman of the board of directors of Gulf Oil Corporation, Pittsburgh, will be the toastmaster.

Before the dinner, President and Mrs. Dickey will give a reception for the College's guests, who will come from all sections of the country for the occasion.

The memorial tablet to be placed on Crosby Hall will bear the following inscription: The first scientific examination of crude oil which led to the beginning of the world's petroleum industry was conducted in this building, then the home of Dr. Dixi Crosby, life-long teacher in the Dartmouth Medical School. In 1853, Francis B. Brewer, class of 1843, brought a sample of Pennsylvania Rock Oil to Dartmouth for analysis by Dr. Crosby and Oliver P. Hubbard, professor of chemistry. Their report of its useful and potentially valuable properties led to the purchase by George H. Bissell, class of 1845, and Jonathan G. Eveleth, aided by Albert H. Crosby, class of 1848, of oil producing land in Western Pennsylvania, the incorporation in 1845 of the first petroleum company in the world and the drilling of the Drake Well at Titusville in 1859.

While Dr. Crosby and Professor Hubbard recognized the unique capabilities of petroleum, it was their opinion that it would never amount to much in world trade because it could not be obtained in sufficient quantity to meet public demand. It took the younger graduates, Bissell and Albert Crosby, and Eveleth, to assay petroleum with the eyes of businessmen. It is this combination of persons and circumstances, the professors and the businessmen whose efforts have since proved so invaluable to this country, that Dartmouth and representatives of the now gigantic oil industry will honor at the June 26 observance.