For years, historians spoke of World War I as the first modern war and as the war to end all wars. They were wrong on both counts. The idea of a war to end all wars has, thus far, no currency whatsoever. And the idea that World War I was the first modern war is almost totally wrong. The first modern war occurred some 60 years earlier. It was a conflict that pitted American against American. The American Civil War (there was nothing civil about it) introduced: large-scale rifled ordinance; widespread use of repeating firearms; high-speed, mechanized troop movement; airborne reconnaissance; the first successful use of the submarine (although not successful for the Confederate submarine Hunley, which sank from the same wounds it inflicted on its victim); the use of ironclad ship against ironclad ship; large-scale troop tactics combined with guerilla warfare; and military use of high-speed telecommunications. True, parts of the Civil War were fought on horseback, but so were parts of World War I 60 odd years later. In fact, nothing progressed much in the way of innovation between the two wars, save for the invention of the airplane and the perfection of the submarine. Indeed, in some instances, the art of warfare deteriorated. With regard to troop movements and tactics, World War I more nearly resembled the Napoleonic Wars than the later Civil War.
The idea embodied here is that what we think of as modern - cutting-edge - technology is often only a rejigging of something older, something we have forgotten, or forgotten to associate with technological progress.
This idea was driven home recently when I helped my mother clean out her garage storage area. I had traveled out to West Texas to give an opening presentation at a Society of Petroleum Engineers conference and, in the bargain, got to spend a couple of days with my mother. As we dug things out of the storage area, we discovered a couple of sealed boxes that neither of us recognized. When we opened them, we found all sorts of things, including old letters, childhood craft projects, photos and yellowing newspaper clippings. One of those clippings caught my eye. It was about the automation of Gulf Oil's Keystone field in Winkler County, Texas. That field, the article pointed out, was completely monitored and more than partially controlled from a remote office in Kermit, Texas, some miles away. It was my father's project. I had forgotten it and how proud he was of it. The year was 1963, nearly 40 years ago.
I still write about, and you still read about and work on, field automation. It is still on the cutting edge of technology. Yet it is not new technology, only the progression of old technology.
This point seems to be brought back to me daily. I have used it as a theme before when calling for reconsideration of the value of tried-and-true technology. But it is more than that. I have a friend, Eddie, who for several years made a fair living inventing tools. One of his primary inspirations for new designs and applications was years of old oilfield catalogs from which he resurrected ideas that were technologically innovative but never quite took off when they were first introduced.
There is really not a lot of nostalgia at work here. The "not invented here" syndrome has done this industry more damage than good by far. We are breaking out of that mold. And this bit of musing is just an urging to check your review mirror every once in a while. There is not much that is technologically new, but there are a bunch of earlier ideas and technologies that can be resurrected or improved. And if you do not find any, I guarantee you will have fun looking.

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