| Industry | Drilling, Manufacturing |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1908 |
| Founder | Howard R. Hughes Sr. |
| Defunct | 1987 |
| Fate | Merged with Baker International |
| Successor | Baker Hughes |
| Headquarters | Texas, |
Key people | Howard Hughes |
| Products | Drill bits |
Hughes Tool Company was an American manufacturer of drill bits. Founded in 1908, [1] it was merged into Baker Hughes Incorporated in 1987.
The company was established in December 1908 [1] as Sharp-Hughes Tool Company when Howard R. Hughes Sr. patented a roller cutter bit that dramatically improved the rotary drilling process for oil drilling rigs. He partnered with longtime business associate Walter Benona Sharp to manufacture and market the bit. Following her husband's death in 1912, Sharp's widow Estelle Sharp sold her 50% share in the company to Howard Hughes Sr. in 1914. [2] The company was renamed Hughes Tool Company on February 3, 1915. [2]
After Hughes Sr. died of a heart attack in 1924, his son Howard Jr. inherited the majority interest in the company, and then convinced his relatives to sell their shares to him as well. Legally emancipated at the age of 18, Howard began using the profits from Hughes Tool to fund his other ventures. Toolco paid Hughes an annual salary of $50,000, and Hughes charged all major expenses such as planes, automobiles, and houses, to the company. In 1937, Hughes used Hughes Tool to buy a controlling interest in TWA. [3]
In 1932, Hughes formed Hughes Aircraft Company as a division of the Hughes Tool Company. Hughes Aircraft thrived on wartime contracts during World War II (though not on the only two contracts it received to actually build airplanes), and by the early 1950s was one of America's largest defense contractors and aerospace companies with revenues far outpacing the original oil tools business. In 1953, Hughes Aircraft became a separate company and was donated to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as its endowment. Hughes Aircraft's helicopter manufacturing business was retained by Hughes Tool Co. as its Aircraft Division until 1972.
At the end of Prohibition in the United States, Hughes agreed to construct a brewery on company property. Gulf Brewing Co. brewed Grand Prize beer for a number of years. [3] : 141, 263
For a period of time in the 1940s to late-1950s, Hughes Tool owned the RKO companies, including RKO Pictures, RKO Studios, RKO Theatres, and the RKO Radio Network.
In 1946, Hughes gave Noah Dietrich "full charge at Toolco." Dietrich hired Fred Ayers to bring order to the production line, and Dietrich invested more than $5,000,000 of the company reserves modernizing the plant. Automation replaced handiwork, and the company standardized on drill bit sizes, while embarking on an advertising campaign. The company also opened plants in Ireland and West Germany, taking advantage of cheaper labor, and lower transportation costs to clients in Saudi Arabia and Russia. Profits for the next 8 years amounted to $285,000,000. [3] : 190–191
During the early 1960s, a wholly owned subsidiary Hughes Dynamics was created, that offered consulting and services in data processing, information technology, credit information processing, and advanced business techniques and management methods. [4] After some $9.5 million of Hughes Tool money was invested in it, results were deemed not acceptable, and it was quickly shut down. [5]
For a brief period in the early-1960s, Hughes Tool held a minority stake in Northeast Airlines. Hughes Tool's majority stake in TWA was sold off in 1966. Two years later, in 1968, Hughes Tool Company purchased the North Las Vegas Air Terminal.
In the late-1960s, Hughes Tool ventured into the hotel and casino business with the acquisition of the Sands, Castaways, Landmark, Frontier, Silver Slipper, and Desert Inn, all in Las Vegas. Hughes Tool also purchased KLAS-TV, Las Vegas' CBS affiliate. In the early-1970s, Hughes Tool ventured back into the airline industry with the takeover of the largest regional air carrier in the western United States: Air West, renamed Hughes Airwest following the purchase. Hughes Tool also briefly owned Los Angeles Airways, a small airline operating a commuter service with a fleet of helicopters.
In 1968, Hughes Tool purchased Sports Network Incorporated and renamed it the Hughes Television Network, with Dick Bailey continuing as president. [6]
The huge main plant for Hughes Tool located in Houston, Texas, fronting Polk Ave, had grown to be one of the biggest oil tool manufacturers in the world. It had the latest, largest, and most automated equipment for foundries, forging, heat treating, and machining anywhere. At its peak during the Texas oil boom, it was a center for manufacturing, design, research, metallurgy, and engineering for oil field technologies. This included the drill bit (well) and tool joint product lines critical for oil and gas drilling, some of the first technologies for ram blast bits for drilling in mines, geothermal drilling, and a hydraulic powered jackhammer known as the Hughes Impactor. [7] It also manufactured a line of truck and crane-mounted earth augering machines ("diggers") that were most commonly used to produce holes up to a depth of about 120 feet (37 m) for building and bridge foundations. It even had a fully functioning drilling simulator inside its main research lab where production or prototype drill bits could be tested on any kind of rock at temperatures and pressures normally encountered in actual drilling operations.
In 1972, Howard Hughes sold the Hughes Tool Company; it had been the consistently profitable part of his empire, and produced the profits that built all the rest from the very beginning. This became the "new" Hughes Tool Company while the remaining divisions of the business were placed in a new holding company, the Summa Corporation.
During the 1979 visit by Deng Xiaoping to the United States, Deng visited the company's Houston plant. [8]
Hughes Tool Company merged with Baker International to form Baker Hughes Incorporated in 1987. [9]
Howard Robard Hughes Jr. was an American aerospace engineer, business magnate, film producer, investor, philanthropist and aircraft pilot. He was best known during his lifetime as one of the richest and most influential people in the world. He first became prominent as a film producer, and then as an important figure in the aviation industry. Later in life, he became known for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle—oddities that were caused in part by his worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), chronic pain from a near-fatal plane crash, and increasing deafness.
Well drilling is the process of drilling a hole in the ground for the extraction of a natural resource such as ground water, brine, natural gas, or petroleum, for the injection of a fluid from surface to a subsurface reservoir or for subsurface formations evaluation or monitoring. Drilling for the exploration of the nature of the material underground is best described as borehole drilling.
Trans World Airlines (TWA) was a major airline in the United States that operated from 1930 until it was acquired by American Airlines in 2001. It was formed as Transcontinental & Western Air to operate a route from New York City to Los Angeles via St. Louis, Kansas City, and other stops, with Ford Trimotors. With American, United, and Eastern, it was one of the "Big Four" domestic airlines in the United States formed by the Spoils Conference of 1930.
The Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace and defense contractor founded on February 14, 1934 by Howard Hughes in Glendale, California, as a division of Hughes Tool Company. The company produced the Hughes H-4 Hercules aircraft, the atmospheric entry probe carried by the Galileo spacecraft, and the AIM-4 Falcon guided missile.
Baker Hughes Company is an American global energy technology company co-headquartered in Houston, Texas and London, UK. As one of the world's largest oil field services, industrial and energy technology companies, it provides products and services to the oil and gas industry for exploration and production, as well as other energy and industrial applications. It operates in over 120 countries, with facilities in Australia, Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Howard Robard Hughes Sr. was an American businessman and inventor who founded the Hughes Tool Company. He invented the "Sharp–Hughes" two-cone rotary drill bit during the Texas Oil Boom. Hughes was the father and namesake of Howard Hughes the American business tycoon and founder of Hughes Aircraft.
Reuben Carlton "Carl" Baker, Sr. was an American oil industry drilling pioneer. He established Baker Oil Tools in 1907 after developing a casing shoe that revolutionized cable tool drilling. In 1903, he introduced the offset bit for cable tool drilling to enable casing wells in hard rock and in 1912 the cement retainer that allowed casing to be cemented in the wells. Baker further improved the process with the float shoe in 1923. Having only a third grade education, he obtained more than 150 patents on oil drilling tools. Baker Oil Tools merged with Hughes Tool Company in 1987 to form Baker Hughes Incorporated.
The Aviator is a 2004 American epic biographical drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by John Logan. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes, Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn, and Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner. The supporting cast features Ian Holm, John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Jude Law, Gwen Stefani, Kelli Garner, Matt Ross, Willem Dafoe, Alan Alda, and Edward Herrmann.
Summa Corporation was a holding company for the business interests of Howard Hughes after he sold the tool division of Hughes Tool Company in 1972. Its holdings included casino hotels, aviation businesses, and television channels. After Hughes's death in 1976, most of the company's assets were sold off, and it focused on developing the master-planned community of Summerlin, Nevada. Summa was renamed as The Howard Hughes Corporation in 1994. It was acquired by The Rouse Company in 1996.
Walter Benona Sharp was an American oilman and innovator in drilling techniques.
Noah Dietrich was an American businessman, who was the chief executive officer of the Howard Hughes business empire from 1925 to 1957. Although these dates have been recorded as the official period of employment, Noah Dietrich continued to oversee and make executive decisions for the Hughes industries as late as 1970. According to his own memoirs, he left the Hughes operation over a dispute involving putting more of his income on a capital gains basis. The manuscript of his eventual memoir, Howard: The Amazing Mr. Hughes, may have been a key, if inadvertent, source of novelist Clifford Irving's infamous fake autobiography of Hughes.
Smith International was a Fortune 500 company headquartered in the Greenspoint district and in unincorporated Harris County, Texas. Smith International ceased to exist as an independent company following the merger with Schlumberger. This company supplies products to gas and oil production and exploration companies. The company used to be identified by its red Sii logo. The company has recently changed its logo to consist of the word "SMITH" in black capital letters with a green globe.
A roller-cone bit is a drill bit used for drilling through rock that features 2 or 3 abrasive, spinning cones that break up rock and sediment as they grind against it. Roller-cone bits are typically used when drilling for oil and gas. A water jet flowing through the bit washes out the rock in a slurry.
George Washington "Tarzan" Christensen was an American football player and businessman. He played college football for the University of Oregon and professional football for the Portsmouth Spartans (1931–1933) and their successor, the Detroit Lions (1934–1938). He later formed the Christensen Diamond Products Company, which became a publicly traded company manufacturing industrial, drilling and military equipment with plants in Europe, Asia, South America and North America.
John H. Meier is an American financier and business consultant now living in Vancouver, Canada. He is noted for his involvement with Howard Hughes, for his behind-the-scenes involvement in events that precipitated President of the United States Richard M. Nixon's resignation, and for his knowledge related to the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
The Atlas Corporation is an American investment firm that was formed in 1928. Atlas invested in and managed a number of major US companies during the 20th century and has a number of investments in natural resources.
IntelliServ is a National Oilwell Varco brand that manufactures and sells a broadband networked drilling string system used to transmit downhole information to the surface in a drilling operation.
Grant Prideco, Inc. is a supplier of drill pipe and drill stem accessories headquartered in Houston, Texas. Since 2008, it has been a subsidiary of energy services company NOV Inc. Grant Prideco was included on the Fortune magazine top 1000 largest corporations for several years in the mid-2000s and through the 1990s and early 2000s was the world's largest oilfield drill pipe supplier.
GE Oil & Gas was the division of General Electric that owned its investments in the petroleum industry. In July 2017, this division was merged with Baker Hughes.
Hughes Dynamics, Inc. was an American computer firm that was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Hughes Tool Company. It existed from 1962 to around 1965. It offered consulting and services in data processing, information technology, credit information processing, and advanced business techniques and management methods. One mid-1963 description given to a trade industry publication was that Hughes Dynamics provided a "broad range of research and consulting services in management sciences and information technology; operations research, systems analysis and design, computer programming and operations, [and] market research" and that its business model involved "consultation with businesses, industries, governments, [and] institutions [as well as] fee for services". It staged a rapid growth from mid-1962 to early 1964, primarily through acquisitions, but then just as quickly shut itself down and dispersed its businesses. The role of Howard Hughes in all this is somewhat unclear.
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