Conoco's Ray Kincaid and a torsion balance in the early 1930s

The torsion balance is credited with making the first discovery of commercial quantities of oil by any geophysical method. The technique rivaled seismic in popularity during the late 1920s and early 1930s. However, gravity meters started to replace them in the mid-1930s and the torsion balance virtually vanished from geophysical exploration by 1940.