The Schlumberger Adventure

Book excerpt: “My purpose in writing the present book is to give the ‘human side’ of the story of the men whose achievements spread the Schlumberger method to the four corners of the globe.” — from the Preface by Anne Gruner Schlumberger The author, whose father Conrad Schlumberger and uncle Marcel Schlumberger invented “electrical prospecting” and founded what became Schlumberger Ltd., now a worldwide leader in oilfield services, describes the travails of the early days of the company. What began in the basement of the Ecole des Mines in Paris with a “black box” (the potentiometer), was further developed at the family home of Val-Richer, and perfected at Péchelbronn, France’s only oil field where “coring” (logging) was born, eventually became known to the entire world. Anne Gruner Schlumberger tells what that journey was like for her father and uncle and other geological researchers and engineers whose resourcefulness and perseverance were tested in remote areas of the world where they toiled under harsh conditions to convince skeptics of the validity of their new exploration methods. The little enterprise the two brothers started in 1919 has become in 1982 when The Schlumberger Adventure first appeared a multinational corporation employing 85,000 people in some 78 countries and listed on the stock exchanges of New York, Paris, London and Amsterdam.