Solomon Robert Dresser (February 1, 1842 – January 21, 1911) was an inventor and a

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

member of the

U.S. House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...

from

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

Biography

Solomon R. Dresser was born in

Litchfield, Michigan Litchfield is a city in Hillsdale County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 1,399 at the 2020 census. The city is surrounded by Litchfield Township, but the two are administered autonomously. History The area was first settled b ...

. He attended the common schools and

Hillsdale College Hillsdale College is a Private university, private Conservatism in the United States, conservative Christian liberal arts college in Hillsdale, Michigan. It was founded in 1844 by Abolitionism, abolitionists known as Free Will Baptists. Its missio ...

. He engaged in agricultural pursuits until 1865. He became an inventor of

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...

and

gas Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma). A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or ...

well equipment, and moved to

in 1872, when the

Pennsylvania oil rush The oil rush in America started in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in the Oil Creek (Allegheny River), Oil Creek Valley when Edwin L. Drake struck "rock oil" there in 1859. Titusville and other towns on the shores of Oil Creek expanded rapidly as oil w ...

was nearing its end, to work in the production of oil and gas. The problem he first tackled was preventing dirty surface

groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidate ...

from contaminating oil pumped from wells, which was accomplished by so-called "packers" sealing the gap between the well and the tube for pumping the oil. By the late 1870s, he developed a new type of packer utilizing a tube-like rubber seal squeezed during operation, and in 1880 patented his invention and founded S.R. Dresser Manufacturing Co. to commercialize it. Later in the 1880s, he started developing pipeline connectors, and after several patents in 1886-1889 arrived to a leakproof flexible design featuring, just like his packer, a squeezable tube-like rubber seal. This Dresser joint or Dresser coupling for the first time enabled long-range transmission of

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

, displaced all the other alternatives on the market and became a

de facto standard A ''de facto'' standard is a custom or convention that has achieved a dominant position by public acceptance or market forces (for example, by early entrance to the market). is a Latin phrase (literally " in fact"), here meaning "in practice b ...

in the industry by late 1890s, continuing at least into 1920s. In 1903, he left business and engineering in favor of politics. Dresser was elected as a Republican to the Fifty-eighth and Fifty-ninth Congresses. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1906. He resumed former business pursuits and died in

Bradford, Pennsylvania Bradford is a city in McKean County, Pennsylvania, McKean County, Pennsylvania. It is located close to the border with New York (state), New York state and approximately south of Buffalo, New York. Bradford is the principal city in the Bradford, ...

in 1911; he was originally interred in Oak Hill Cemetery, but his son (unhappy with the maintenance of the cemetery) had the 20 foot obelisk and the families graves moved to Willowdale Cemetery.

References

Sources

The Political Graveyard
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dresser, Solomon R. 1842 births 1911 deaths 19th-century American inventors People from Litchfield, Michigan People from Bradford, Pennsylvania Hillsdale College alumni Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania 19th-century American politicians