Early GSI employee Henry Salvatori left that company in 1933 to found another major seismic contractor, Western Geophysical.
GSI was one of the most successful seismic contracting companies for over 50 years and was the parent of an even more successful company, Texas Instruments. In 1930, Karcher left GRC and helped to found Geophysical Service Incorporated (GSI). In 1925, oil prices had rebounded, and Karcher helped to form Geophysical Research Corporation (GRC) as part of the oil company Amerada. The Geological Engineering Company folded due to a drop in the price of oil. "As one who personally tried to introduce the method into general consulting practice, the senior writer can definitely recall many times when reflections were not even considered on a par with the divining rod, for at least that device had a background of tradition." An early advocate of the method commented: The first field tests were conducted near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1921.Įarly reflection seismology was viewed with skepticism by many in the oil industry. With several others, many affiliated with the University of Oklahoma, Karcher helped to form the Geological Engineering Company, incorporated in Oklahoma in April 1920. In discussion with colleagues, the idea developed that these reflections could aid in exploration for petroleum. John Clarence Karcher discovered seismic reflections independently while working for the United States Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology) on methods of sound ranging to detect artillery. Due to the war, he was unable to follow up on the idea. He applied for the first patent on a seismic exploration method in 1914, which was issued in 1917. He also worked on methods of detecting submarines during World War I. His work was initially on the propagation of acoustic waves in water, motivated by the sinking of the Titanic by an iceberg in 1912. The Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden was the first to conceive of using reflected seismic waves to infer geology. The 1924 discovery of the Orchard salt dome in Texas led to a boom in seismic refraction exploration along the Gulf Coast, but by 1930 the method had led to the discovery of most of the shallow Louann Salt domes, and the refraction seismic method faded. In 1921 he founded the company Seismos, which was hired to conduct seismic exploration in Texas and Mexico, resulting in the first commercial discovery of oil using the refraction seismic method in 1924. He applied for a German patent in 1919 that was issued in 1926. Ludger Mintrop, a German mine surveyor, devised a mechanical seismograph in 1914 that he successfully used to detect salt domes in Germany. Seismic reflection exploration grew out of the seismic refraction exploration method, which was used to find oil associated with salt domes. The use of human-generated seismic waves to map in detail the geology of the upper few kilometers of the Earth's crust followed shortly thereafter and has developed mainly due to commercial enterprise, particularly the petroleum industry. The basic model of the Earth's deep interior is based on observations of earthquake-generated seismic waves transmitted through the Earth's interior (e.g., Mohorovičić, 1910). Reflections and refractions of seismic waves at geologic interfaces within the Earth were first observed on recordings of earthquake-generated seismic waves. 3.1.5 Marine survey acquisition (Ocean Bottom Nodes (OBN)).3.1.4 Marine survey acquisition (Ocean Bottom Seismic (OBS)).3.1.3 Marine survey acquisition (Towed Streamer).2.5.3 Refraction / Head wave / Conical wave.2.5.2 Ground roll / Rayleigh wave / Scholte wave / Surface wave.2.3 Reflection and transmission at non-normal incidence.2.2 Reflection and transmission at normal incidence.