OH 1472 | Oral History

OH 1472

Petroleum engineer, geophysicist. His career in the oil exploration business; his service aboard the destroyer USS Benham in the Pacific Theater during World War II. His family’s shipbuilding business in Norway; his parents’ emigration to the United States; his experiences working aboard tankers; college at Louisiana State University, 1934-38; his positions as “jug hustler,” dynamite loader, driller, party manager, and party chief of a seismic engineering crew for Texaco; his duties aboard the Benham as executive officer; application of seismic engineering to sonar operations; his observations concerning the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945; postwar re-employment with Texaco as a geophysicist; his retirement from Texaco and work as a consultant interpreting speculative seismic data; his advocacy of the use of retired warships for peacetime activities; his association with boatbuilder Andrew Higgins; application of sonics to the medical field, offshore oil drilling, underwater archaeology, and anti-submarine warfare; his patents for imaging and mapping the underground; the influence of Dr. Alexander Wolfe on his career.

About this Oral History

Physical Description 116 pp.
Terms of Use Open
Interviewer(s) Alvin Clement, Stephanie Hrabar
Date of Interview November 6, 2000 to November 13, 2000

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