But the real turning point occurs in 1927

They had succeeded! This 5 September 1927, Henri George Doll, René Jost and Charles Scheibli come to succeed the first electrical coring world. The operation took place on the site of Mertzwiller, in Alsace, which operates the Pechelbronn society. No doubt the technique used is still summary: it took perform measures point by point, hand down probes with electrode and then to raise them metre by metre. But, the results are indisputable: there is oil in the bowels of Mertzwiller! In Paris where he is a man exulted on learning the new: Conrad Schlumberger. The "pioneers of Pechelbronn," Doll, Jost and Scheibli, working alongside her in the company he founded a few years earlier with his brother Marcel. And discovering oil on the site of Pechelbronn, the three men come to confirm the intuitions on which he worked for many years. Intuitions that will revolutionize the oil industry.

The France is not oil but it has ideas. Conrad Schlumberger history illustrates dramatically the famous adage. Professor of physics become industrial, he founded indeed, from laboratory work, which today is the first group of oil services in the world: Schlumberger. Present in 80 countries, "schlum" currently weighs 12 billion of turnover. Using 52,000 employees, it deploys its activities of the cementation of wells drilling through training evaluation and seismic studies. Installed in the United States since 1940 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange, the group is today more American than French. But the founding family is always present in its capital, through particular branch of the Seydoux...

Family, religion. These are probably the two jurisdictions of the success of Conrad Schlumberger. It belongs to a prestigious industrial dynasty which already gave to the France several major contractors. Since the early 19th century, Nicolas Schlumberger founded a cotton mill, is on the textile family has built his fortune. A trade which, three generations later, the father of Conrad, Paul Schlumberger, is always faithful. In Schlumberger, the family plays a critical role. In his breast, to operate a strong educational investment and real financial solidarity, one and the other to the exclusive service of family affairs. Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger are are not immune. When in 1919, the brothers decide to create a company to exploit the discoveries of Conrad, their father Paul agrees to help them financially. But the terms of the moral contract are explicit: "I am committed to my sons Conrad and Marcel funds for the study of the research to determine the nature of the subsurface electric currents up to a maximum of the sum of 500,000 francs." In return, my sons will commit to not to scatter their efforts, to refrain from research or inventions in other fields. "Money, Yes, but for a specific project! This is the rule in the Schlumberger. A rule which passes by the submission of the individual to the Group and a strong specialization of the route. The religion of the family Protestantism is it only a rigorous school: the enhancement of knowledge including by direct access to the Scriptures , the worship of the work and savings, the denial of the social whirl and easy life, as many values that permeate strongly family.

A great open mind

This double terreau family and moral largely Conrad Schlumberger route. Born in 1878 in Guebwiller, the future industrial inherits from his father a prodigious hard work and the disdain of the trappings of wealth. His mother, he inherited an openness of mind. Born of Witt, Marguerite Schlumberger is the granddaughter of François Guizot Minister of Louis-Philippe and the daughter of Conrad de Witt, Member of the Calvados. Women of character she organized a movement of passive resistance during the visit of the Konprinz in Guebwiller in 1873, asking everyone to close their shutters in the passage of the procession , she created two antialcooliques cabarets where it consumes broth bowls in the city, founded an association for the rehabilitation of prostitutes before be elected at the head of the International League of women's rights. Suffragette in an environment with little, a nothing cocardière, Marguerite Schlumberger passes to his son maturity of mind early and a taste for the reflection. This Patriot in the soul also plays an essential role in the decision taken by the couple to send their children to Paris to continue their education. At least will be away from the Germans! One after the other, the five sons will thus leave Guebwiller, their parents ending with join them. Conrad, for its part, is enrolled in the lycée Condorcet in 1893. Five years later, he presents with success at the Ecole polytechnique entrance exam. He second out in 1900 and integrates the Ecole des mines de Paris. In 1904, it is mining engineer, stationed at Rodez and Toulouse. That same year 1904, he married Louise Delpech, a Protestant whom he met at a ball in Paris.

A pioneering idea

Curious, mind constantly awakening, Conrad Schlumberger could long be satisfied of a post of controller of Mines in the remote district of Toulouse. Very attracted by education, he became in 1906 Professor of physics at the Ecole des mines de Saint-Etienne, a year later, at the Ecole des mines de Paris. It is then that he began to work on the possible applications of electricity in mining exploration. A truth be told, the idea of search for deposits of raw materials contained in the basement by measuring the disruption they cause in the fields of physical forces that surround them is not, at this time, completely new. Thus, at the beginning of the 1830s, an English engineer, R.W. Fox, set to the

point a process of exploration based on the extent of anomalies in the Earth's magnetic field. Later, other researchers especially in the United States have sought to use radio waves to identify deposits. But these methods have proven less effective. In the oil industry then booming, they are including never used. To identify deposits, sector companies have in fact, at the beginning of the century, three ways: the tracking surface which has happened for example in Pennsylvania, where sheets affleuraient to the ground, or to Texas where Spindletop Hill let gas , cuttings reassembled by the drilling fluid andmore rarely, carrots ski lifts of the basement rocks. Clearly, when it comes to dive into the bowels of the Earth, petroleum engineers are almost totally blind.

If it was not the first to take an interest in mining exploration, Conrad Schlumberger is the first to discern that the resistance offered by the soil to the passage of an electric current can be strongly affected by the presence of a conductive mass, such as a metal deposit or a fluid. Hence the idea pioneering of the young professor at the school of mines: moment resistance undergoes marked variations, it must be possible, by sending electric current, to establish the map of the potentials of land and very precise conclusions on the nature of his basement.

In 1911, to validate his theories, Conrad Schlumberger monte in the cellars of the Ecole des mines in Paris, boulevard Saint-Michel, an experience of complete with breaks of wood with a mixture of sand and clay infused with more or less salt water. By planting two electrodes and circulating current, he manages to curves reflecting variations in strength of the mixture. It remains now to conduct full-scale experiments. It is made in the summer 1912. At Val-Richer, in the pays d'Auge, in the property which belongs to the family of his mother, he engages in a series of measures. It is a success. September 27, 1912, Conrad Schlumberger filed a patent entitled "method for the determination of the basement by electricity". It is the Act of birth of the modern geophysics.

Of the Canada in the Belgian Congo

Scholarly research to the industrial vocation, there is however a ditch that Conrad Schlumberger will take a few years yet to cross. Along the year 1913, and again in 1914, he leads, under its cap of Professor at the Ecole des mines, many works of prospecting in Calvados, identifying several deposits of metallic ores. War it takes in artillery just temporarily interrupt its work. Four years later, it is at the crossroads: to resume his position at the Ecole des mines or even exploit the patent filed in 1912 We do not know what compels finally to opt for the industrial vocation. Family history or influence of his brother Marcel Born in 1884 in Guebwiller, mounted in Paris in 1899, this former student of the Ecole centrale knows the world to have made a career on the railways and, during the war, participated in the manufacture of the first French tanks. Maybe it's him who convinced his brother to engage in the business. In 1919 in any case, with the help of their father, Conrad and Marcel create a small company specializing in the application of physical measures for mineral wealth. Is that in 1926 that it will become the society of electrical prospecting, direct ancestor of the current group Schlumberger. For the time being, installed in Paris rue Fabert, small business has only two employees: Conrad and Marcel. While the first is rather man of ideas, the theorist, the second is more dedicated to technical aspects and the development of prospecting tools. Between the two brothers, complementarity is perfect.

Based on the pioneer of their technical nature and with widely use the networks of business the Schlumberger family but also those of former students of the Ecole polytechnique and the Ecole centrale, very present in the extractive industries, the two brothers get to at the outset a multitude of contracts, not only France, but Romania also from abroad, including where they go in 1923 to probe the Aricesti dome. It is the first major success of Geophysics applied in the world of oil. Other contracts follow, Serbia, the Canada and to the Belgian Congo distant, in the mining industry as in the oil industry. Result: in the 1920s, the company has 30 employees, mostly engineers. But the real turning point occurs in 1927. For some time, Conrad Schlumberger has an idea: why not to measure the resistance of the basement using wells already drilled This process, believe, would have a better idea of the distribution of the strata. The idea, we have seen, is implemented for the first time on the site of Pechelbronn in September 1927. That day, the electric prospecting company incorporated the following year is the first electrical coring in the world. A technique that provides literally eyes Petroleum Engineers...

This process, called "electric log", will make the success of the company and the highly specialized on the oil sector. In the years that followed, the society of exploration electric intervenes on almost all the oil fields of the world, especially in the United States where a subsidiary is based in 1931 the Mexico and even in the USSR. This international vocation early unavoidable in the oil sector says in many ways the transfer of the headquarters of the company in Houston, Texas, in 1940. This decision is however not Conrad that was made but his brother Marcel. Returning from a trip to the USSR, in 1936, the inventor of the electric drill indeed died suddenly, had a heart attack at age sixty.