Joseph Reid Gas Engine Company
Oil City, Venango County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Founded in Oil City, 1894, it produced engines for pumping oil wells. Its popular single piston engine was used worldwide by the oil industry. The company closed in 1939.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the boomtown decades after Pennsylvania's Oil City became a hub of the world's first petroleum industry, Joseph Reid founded his gas engine works here in 1894. The company's rugged single-piston engine became a workhorse for pumping wells, shipped to oilfields around the globe until the firm shut its doors in 1939. It was a classic example of the specialized machine-building that grew up alongside the oil that made the region famous.
Why it matters
The engines built here powered the extraction of oil worldwide, showing how a single small city in northwestern Pennsylvania helped mechanize the energy industry that reshaped the modern world.
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Related people
- · Joseph Reid
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