The “yellow dog,” a two-wicked cast iron lamp invented by Jonathan Dillen of Petroleum Centre, Pa.

Rare is the community oil and gas museum that doesn’t have a “yellow dog” in its collection. The two-wicked lamp is an oilfield icon. Some say that the unusual design originated with whaling ships — but neither the Nantucket nor New Bedford whaling museums can find any such evidence.

Railroad museums have collections of cast iron smudge pots, but nothing quite like the oilfields’ yellow dogs. Although many companies manufactured the iron or steel lamps, the yellow dog’s origins remain murky.

Yellow dog inventor

Inventor Jonathan Dillen of Petroleum Centre, Pa., was first to patent what became the yellow dog in 1870, “for illuminating places out of doors, especially in and about derricks, and machinery in the oil regions, whereby explosions are more dangerous and destructive to life and property than in most other places.”

Dillen’s patent was improved and reissued in 1872 and again in 1877, when it was assigned to John Eaton and E.H. Cole. “My improved lamp is intended to burn crude petroleum as it comes from the wells fresh and gassy. It is to be used, mainly, around oil wells, and its construction is such as to make it very strong, so that it cannot be easily broken or exploded.”

Eaton, Cole & Burnham Co. grew from John Eaton’s 1861 business trip to the booming oil region of western Pennsylvania. Within a few years, he set up his own business with Edward Cole. With the addition of Edward Burnham, the company grew to become a preeminent supplier of oilfield equipment. It became Oil Well Supply Co. in 1878.

At its 45-acre Imperial Works alongside the Allegheny River in Oil City, Pa., Oil Well Supply Co. produced oilfield engines and “cast and malleable iron goods” — including yellow dogs. The 1884 catalog listed yellow dog lamps at a price of US $1.50 each.

Oil Well Supply Co. became part of United States Steel Corp. in 1929 and today, as an object of legend and lore, yellow dogs are relegated to museums, antique shops, and collectors’ shelves.

Secondary usage

A producer of oil and natural gas, Forest Oil Corp. is credited with developing secondary recovery of oil technique (waterflooding) in the early 1900s — a revolutionary event for the oil and gas industry at that time.

When Forest Dale Dorn and Clayton Glenville Dorn founded Forest Oil in northern Pennsylvania in 1916 they adopted an image of the yellow dog derrick lantern as its corporate logo. The company’s roots can be traced to the nation’s first giant oil field in Bradford, discovered in 1871.

By 1916, oil production in the Bradford field had declined to just under 40 b/d. The reserve was considered by many to be dry. Undeterred, Dorn applied his new waterflooding technique to initiate secondary recovery of oil.

The success of Dorn’s method prompted him to create his own waterflooding company. Within five years, Forest Oil was recognized as a leader in secondary oil recovery systems. Waterflooding was soon being applied throughout the industry, extending well life by as much as 10 years.

The keystone shape in the center of the lantern symbolizes the state of Pennsylvania — where oil was first discovered and where Forest Oil was founded.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the “Petroleum Age,” Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2008) quarterly newsletter of the American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS), Washington, DC.