Your Subtitle text
Baker Hughes News
History...
The Hughes Tool Company was founded by Walter Benona Sharp and Howard R. Hughes, Sr., father of Howard Hughes, Jr. In 1908, Howard Hughes, Sr. and his partner Walter Sharp, developed the first two-cone drill bit, designed to enable rotary drilling in harder, deeper formations than was possible with earlier fishtail bits. They conducted two secret tests on a drilling rig in Goose Creek, Texas. Each time, Hughes asked the drilling crew to leave the rig floor, pulled the bit from a locked wooden box, and then his associates ran the bit into the hole. The drill pipe twisted off on the first test, but the second was extremely successful. In 1909, the Sharp & Hughes bit was granted a U.S. patent.