"When did oil drums enter use?" Topic

Does anyone know what year/decade these were invented and then became more widely used? Late 19th century? Early 20th? WWI? WWII?

I'm hoping early enough to use them in at least some VSF gaming. :-)

If your talking about steel drums, then they were not mass produced until WWII.

Yes, the steel drums. But were they produced before WWII but on a limited basis?

Do not know about the first steel oil drums but the design grew out of wooden barrels, I suspect though I can not confirm that the development of the oil industry lead to the 55 gallon oil drum. Found this on line:

"Today's 55-gallon drum resulted from military shipping requirements in World War II, the first war in which trucks, cold rolled steel, stamp or pattern forging machinery and welding were widely available. The drums helped win the Battle of Guadalcanal in the first U.S. offensive in the South Pacific Theater. The U.S. Navy could not maintain control of the seas long enough to offload aviation fuel for U.S. aircraft ashore, so the drums were often transported to the island on fast ships such as destroyers and shoved over the sides (or, time permitting, lowered in cargo nets). Aviation fuel is lighter than seawater, so the drums floated, and Navy Seabees in small craft corralled the drums."

and this:

"The standard barrel of crude oil or other petroleum product (abbreviated bbl) is 42 US gallons (34.9723 imp gal; 158.9873 L). This measurement originated in the early Pennsylvania oil fields, and permitted both British and American merchants to refer to the same unit, based on the old English wine measure, the tierce."

and this extract:

A Brief History Of: The Oil Barrel

It has been more than a century since any major producer shipped oil in an actual barrel, but the unit has been the industry's standard since the mid-1800s, when overwhelmed Pennsylvania oilmen collected the substance in whiskey barrels after striking their first gushers. Before U.S. drilling began in 1859, "rock oil" (to differentiate it from vegetable oil or animal fat) was sopped up with rags, wrung out and peddled as a cure for everything from headaches to deafness. Spurred by demand for lamp fuel as whale blubber grew scarce, derricks popped up all over Pennsylvania's oil region in the 1860s--although subsequent overproduction drove prices so far down that at one point, a wooden barrel was worth twice as much as the oil it contained, according to Daniel Yergin's definitive tome on oil, The Prize. But as the oil boom took hold and the barrel size was set at 42 gal. (160 L), Pennsylvania's roads became clogged with horse-drawn wagons piled high with the containers, prompting construction of the first oil pipelines (made of wood) and leading 25-year-old John D. Rockefeller to form what became the Standard Oil Co. It would eventually control up to 90% of U.S. oil-refining until the company was broken up in 1911.

Soon after the first long-distance pipelines were laid in the Northeast in the late 1870s and early 1880s, the first oil tankers were allowed to pass through the Suez Canal, and the modern shipping system was born. Today crude oil travels in tankers that can carry up to 4 million bbl. With daily world demand at about 85 million bbl., petroleum represents about a third of all international cargo. And even though the commodity is also measured in kiloliters (in Japan) and metric tons (in Russia), thanks to whiskey, the units are always converted to the 42-gal. barrel for trading and selling.

While it does not say a year one can infer that it was sometime after the civil war and before WWI that the standardization of the 55 gallon steel drum came into being and the requirements of WWII made them common.

VR
James Mattes

I've seen photos of airplanes being fueled from steel drums in the 1920s, so they definitely predate WWII.

Mike

First World War model aircraft fueler.looks very like modern pressed stell drums but the construction was heavier but visibly they would work.

x42

Just after the turn of the 20th century it would seem – patent dated 1905

link

OK, so good for interwar pulp. A mad scientist could have made them earlier. Thanks for the detailed info!

standard issue for mad scientists

Also used into the 1970's for transporting all sorts of chemicals and foodstuffs before suitable plastic drums became available. The chemical ones that I have seen look a lot like the ones in the patent drawing on Dom's link, with what looks like an small 'I' beam running around the two bulges – people liked them as you could weld things to the beam without worrying about the former contents exploding or catching fire.

As a supplementary question, when were oil drums first cut and beaten into steel drums?

I know that HMS Uster had the first steel band in any of HM ships following her deployment to the Bahamas a little after WW2.

All the best,

John.

In Pa back in the era they started making steel drums. See Nellie Bly link above for the paten.

VR
James Mattes

That's drums the musical instrument, not drums the cylindrical containers.

And when I say "steel band", I mean muscial ensemble playing steel drums, not a ring made of steel.

All the best,

John.