Serge Alexander Scherbatskoy

Serge Alexander Scherbatskoy (born July 18, 1908 in Buyuk Dere in Büyükdere, Sariyer , suburb of Constantinople ; † November 25, 2002 in Fort Worth ) was an American inventor and entrepreneur specializing in the field of oil prospecting .

Life

Serge Alexander Scherbatskoy temporarily held the property rights to more than 200 patents worldwide in the field of oil production. He was the son of Maria Tolmachevo (1886–1950) and Alexander Ippolitovich Scherbatskoy . He married Mary Ellen Dunham of Tulsa in 1938 ; their children were Mary, Serge, Timothy and Jonathan. He studied at the Technical University of Charlottenburg and at the Sorbonne .

In 1929 he migrated to the United States of America. From 1929 to 1932 during the economic depression after Black Thursday he developed the Type C Carrier telephone system at Bell Laboratories .

In 1932 he offered, under the name Bureau of Radio Engineering , the repair of radio receivers as a doorstep business .

In 1933 he completed postgraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania as part of the Works Progress Administration program and participated in the development of a sound prism ( crossover for acoustic signals). From 1933 to 1934 he developed a function generator for a standing wave for the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company (PHILCO Radio and Television Corporation) to test radio receivers .

In 1936 he moved to Tulsa and worked for the Seismic Services Corporation (SSC) founded by William G. Green in 1929 . At that time, the Schlumberger method was used for oil prospecting . The name Seismic Services Corporation refers to refractive seismics as an alternative form of petroleum prospecting. The group around William G. Green, consisting of Scherbatskoy, Jacob Neufeld (* 1906 in Lodz ; † April 5, 2000) and Robert Earl Fearon, developed methods and devices for recording terrestrial nuclear radiation because oil shale structures have absorption and reflection patterns show that can be interpreted. This prospecting method has been assigned a daily yield of between 200 and 1000 barrels of oil in Oklahoma , Kansas , Texas and Louisiana .

Well Surveys Inc.

The Standard Oil Company invested in Well Surveys Inc. , founded by Green , in which Scherbatskoy acted as technical director and which employed Bruno Pontecorvo from the second half of 1940 to the first half of 1943 . Pontecorvo held a patent from 1941 called Method and Apparatus for Logging a Well, US Patent 2,349,753 .

Robert Earl Fearon reported in a patent application from March 10, 1942 on the use of an ionization chamber in a borehole. Miniaturization of the counter tube was a prerequisite for such applications.

From Gilbert LaBine (February 10, 1890, † June 8, 1977) Scherbatskoy was employed at the deposit at Port Radium, Northwest Territories , where uranium, which was also associated with radium , was mined for the Manhattan Project . Scherbatskoy developed portable counting tubes here.

Geophysical Measurements Corporation

In 1948 Scherbatskoy founded the Geophysical Measurements Corporation (GMC) in Tulsa. The company offered the measurement of nuclear radiation from exploratory wells along the depth development for oil prospecting. In 1964, GMC exchanged its shares for shares in McCullough Tool , which in 1968 reached the exchange value of waste paper .

From 1973 he was a business partner of Marvin Gearhart of Gearhart-Owen Industries in Dallas . This was founded in 1955 by Marvin Gearhart and Harold Owen as a petroleum drilling equipment supplier. With Gearhart-Owen he developed drilling measurement technology until 1988, after which the company was insolvent in 1986, under the direction of Halliburton .

In 1988, Scherbatskoy opened a company in Forth Worth trying to exploit his patents on Measurement While Drilling.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The New York Times , December 22, 2002, Paid Notice: Deaths SCHERBATSKOY, SERGE A.
2. ^ Simone Turchetti, The Pontecorvo Affair : A Cold War Defection and Nuclear Physics, 2012, p. 42
3. ^ Fearon, Robert E. Well Logging Method and Apparatus. US patent 2,275,748, filed March 28, 1942: 6576. Well-survey method and apparatus; Robert Earl Fearon, Tulsa, Okla., Assignor to Well Surveys, Inc., Tulsa, Okla., A corporation of Delaware: US patent 2,275,747, issued March 10, 1942. p. 60, compiled by W. AYVAZOGLOU, GEOPHYSICAL ABSTRACTS 109 (PDF; 2.2 MB), APRIL – JUNE 1942 Chap. 5 Radioactive Methods p. 48
4. ↑ Smithsonian Institution , overview of the collection of Serge A. Scherbatskoy Papers, circa 1925-2002 (bulk 1970s – 1990s) ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 117 kB)