IVIV: Golden Fang/Howard Hughes

[rich]

sounds groovy, dude

there is the CIA flapping around in that man's closet of insanity

more please

rich

On 11/3/09, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> 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.
>