Synopses & Reviews
On March 18, 1940, French army lieutenant Henri-Georges Doll came to the U.S. embassy in Paris to give a deposition before American Vice-Consul John Wood. Europe was at war. A graduate of two of France's grandes ?coles of science, engineering, and civil service, Doll had been summoned back from the French-German border to work on a new system for detecting land mines, which the Germans were deploying on a vast scale. Doll's deposition, however, had nothing to do with war. He had come to the embassy to testify in a court case pending in Houston, Texas-a patent lawsuit, Schlumberger Well Surveying Corportion v. Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company. It marked one of the first great industrial battles for control of the technology of oil and gas exploration. One of the most prolific inventors of the twentieth century, Doll was a pioneer in the technology of "seeing underground" using electrical current, radio waves, and sound, which enabled the explosive growth of world oil production. He also directed his inventive genius toward military and medical research; but, as demonstrated in this important biography, his work had the deepest impact on commerce and engineering, which is still felt today.
Synopsis
The first biography of the giant of engineering and geophysics.
Synopsis
In March 1940, with Europe at war, French army lieutenant Henri-Georges Doll came to the U.S. embassy in Paris to give a deposition. Doll was an artillery commander, a graduate of France'sgrandes coles of science, engineering, and service. He had been mobilized to the front at the start of the war, then quickly recalled to Paris to work on a secret device for detecting the deadly land mines being planted by the German army on a vast new scale. But Doll's deposition that day had nothing to do with the war. He had come to testify in a patent lawsuit pending in Houston, Texas. The case was Schlumberger Well Surveying Corporation v. Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company: It marked one of the first great industrial battles for control of the technology of oil and gas exploration. When the German army marched into Paris three months later, Doll escaped to America, where he developed his new mine detector for the U.S. army, then settled in a small Connecticut town to become one of the most prolific inventors of the twentieth century. His sixth sense for applied science would help create the modern technology of seeing underground using electrical signals and sound waves, technology that enabled the explosive growth of oil production after the war and built oilfield services giant Schlumberger.
A Sixth Sense is the heroic story of an extraordinary French-American scientist whose inventions and style of research changed the arc of the oil industry.