IVIV: Golden Fang/Howard Hughes

[Robin Landseadel]

Proverbs for Paranoids numero cero: JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID . . .

Trust me, I'll develop this thread. But for the moment, I'm going to  
say that the Golden Fang, in addition to being a swell metaphor for  
Capitalism in the corporate age, also points to Howard Hughes.

This is developing thought, but noted that the device/invention that  
got the Hughes fortune initiated was the drill bit patented by Howard  
Hughes father, Howard Robard Hughes, Sr:

	Hughes drill bits:

	Hughes engaged in various mining business endeavors before
	capitalizing on the Spindletop oil discovery in Texas, as a result
	of which he began devoting his full time to the oil business. On
	20 November 1908 he filed the basic patents for the Sharp-
	Hughes Rock Bit, and on 10 August 1909 was granted two
	patents for this rock drill. Hughes had patented a two-cone
	rotary drill bit that penetrated medium and hard rock with ten
	times the speed of any former bit, and its discovery
	revolutionized oil well drilling. It is unlikely that he actually
	invented the two-cone roller bit, but his legal experience helped
	him in understanding that its patents were important for
	capitalizing on the invention. According to the PBS show
	History Detectives, several other people and companies had
	produced similar drill bits years earlier. In its initial tests at
	Goose Creek Oilfield in 1909 where the first offshore drilling for
	oil in Texas was occurring in Harris County, twenty-one miles
	southeast of Houston on Galveston Bay, the Sharp-Hughes
	Rock Bit penetrated 14 ft (4.3m) of hard rock in 11 hours which
	no previous equipment had been able to penetrate at all.

	He co-founded the Sharp-Hughes Tool Company with Walter
	Benona Sharp based in Houston, Texas in 1909, and after
	Sharp's death in 1912 took over management. Hughes began
	purchasing the Sharp stock immediately and by 1918 had
	acquired full ownership of the company. The essential asset of
	Hughes Tool Company (renamed) were the 10 August 1909
	patents for his dual-cone rotary drill bit. The fees for licensing
	this technology were the basis of Hughes Tool's revenues, and
	by 1914 the dual-cone roller bit was used in eleven U.S. states
	and in thirteen foreign countries. After Hughes Sr.'s death in
	1924, his only child Howard R. Hughes, Jr. assumed control of
	the company as its sole owner. Nine years later Hughes Tool
	Company engineers created a tri-cone rotary drill bit, and from
	1934 to 1951 Hughes' market share approached 100 per cent.
	Sharp-Hughes Rock Bit found virtually all the oil discovered
	during the initial years of rotary drilling, and Howard Junior
	became the wealthiest person in the world. During 1972 he
	made the tool company public and realized $150 million the
	day it sold.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_R._Hughes,_Sr.