For many years the reflection seismograph has been the most extensively used means of geophysical exploration employed by the oil industry. If its development can be credited to a single man, you are unquestionably the one. Although the abstract idea of reflections of sound energy from underground formations preceded you by a few seasons, it was not until you devoted yourself to the problem that the idea was implemented with equipment and procedures that rapidly transformed an idea into the most important technique available to geophysical prospecting today.

     During World War I, you were engaged at the U.S. Bureau of Standards in developing sound ranging equipment. Such equipment found use at the fighting fronts in Europe for locating the position of enemy guns. The airborne sounds of their discharge passed over an array of microphones, which signaled electrically the arrival times of the airwave to a central recording station. From the geometry of the microphone array and the recorded time differences, the position of the source of sound could be determined with accuracy and dispatch. This background of experience in sound ranging and in equipment and system development undoubtedly had great influence on the subsequent trend of your activities and provided fertile ground for the germination of the reflection seismograph.

     Among your associates at the U.S. Bureau of Standards were W. P. Haseman, Burton C. McCollum and the speaker. You, son of the oil country, contributed materially to their awareness of the problems of oil exploration and stimulated thought about new means for solving them. Dr. Haseman undertook to raise funds in Oklahoma to pay the cost of experimental work, and the Geological Engineering Company was formed in 1920. You designed and built the special equipment required and purchased what was needed and available. In the spring of 1921, you headed west for Oklahoma prepared to get off the concrete, physically or technically.

     Your experimental program involved the investigation of both reflection and refraction techniques. The field as well as all other work was done competently, energetically and with imagination, but it finally had to be abandoned for lack of further financial support. The lack of success was only apparent and not real. Under more favorable circumstances, substantially the same equipment and the same techniques were later successful.

     Had the refraction experiments been made over a salt dome in the Gulf Coast and the reflection experiments not been concentrated on relatively shallow reflections, the 1921 field season of the Geological Engineering Company would undoubtedly have been followed immediately by commercial application of the seismograph method. When Dr. Mintrop's parties arrived in the Texas Gulf Coast some three years later, they were no better prepared to discover salt domes in that area than you were at the end of your 1921 field work. Reflection work on shallow horizons remains to this date among the more difficult problems to handle. The problems presented to you for experimental attack were far from being most suitable to insuring your success.
 
     In 1925, you became vice president and manager of the Geophysical Research Corporation, the first American company organized to do seismograph work. Your first crew went to work for Gulf early in 1926, and it was quickly followed by others. Many men who joined you in this expanding work have become leaders in the geophysical profession. GRC and its alumni have furnished nearly half the presidents of SEG.

     During the next few years, your crews discovered many salt domes and during the same years the development of the reflection technique engaged your attention. By 1927 commercial reflection surveys and discoveries were being made in Oklahoma.
 
     Because of the relative scarcity of correlatable reflections, the Gulf coastal area was found to represent a special problem area for reflections. The first GRC crew to do reflection work in this area was employed by Gulf, and its first reflection survey was made in 1929 over the Hankamer dome in S. E. Texas.
 
     In 1930, you and some of your colleagues organized the Geophysical Service, Inc., and this, in turn, has since become the parent of other well-known geophysical contracting organizations.

     For these and other achievements too numerous to mention, we salute you:

• Pioneer among American geophysicists
• Active, imaginative, and practical developer of ideas, men, and equipment which have contributed materially to the outstanding world leadership of the United States in geophysical prospecting
• The most outstanding contributor to the development of the reflection seismograph method
• Past president of SEG

     The Society has expressed its respect and admiration for you by electing you to honorary membership. It gives me great satisfaction to have been the spokesman for the society on this occasion and to hand you this certificate of honorary membership.

Background on the Development of the Seismic Method in Oil Exploration:

The fundamental work in the development of exploration seismology and seismic prospecting techniques and instruments was pioneered by the works of Reginald Fessenden, Dr. Ludger Mintrop, Everette Lee DeGolyer, and J. Clarence Karcher.

     Reflection seismic prospecting stemmed principally from the pioneering works of Reginald Fessenden about 1913. This work was directed towards measuring water depths and detecting icebergs using sound waves. He was the chief physicist for the Submarine Signaling Company of Boston. In the spring of 1913, seismic instruments invented by Dr. Fessenden were used to record both refractions and reflections through earth formations in the vicinity of Framingham, Massachusetts. A year of experimental work followed, using both water and rock to transmit sound waves. A patent application was made on April 2, 1914 with the title "Method and Apparatus for Locating Ore Bodies". The Patent Office issued this patent on September 18, 1917.

     Dr. Ludger Mintrop, a distinguished pioneer in the development of exploration geophysics, invented and developed the Mintrop Mechanical Seismography (1922) in Germany. Very likely it is responsible for the first discovery in the seismic method, the Orange salt dome in the Texas Gulf Coast. This device was the first commercial seismograph and it's successful application was the catalyst for the initiation of seismic exploration worldwide. U.S. Patent 1451080 was granted to Mintrop on 10 April 1923 for this invention.

     Everette Lee DeGolyer, president of the Geophysical Research Corporation, considered the Fessenden patent to be of primary importance. In the five-year period from 1919 to 1924, DeGolyer made more than a dozen trips to Boston to consult with Fessenden.

     In 1925, J. Clarence Karcher accompanied DeGolyer to Boston and the three scientists (Fessenden, DeGolyer, and Karcher) discussed the Ore Bodies patent. Karcher made several more trips and eventually persuaded Dr. Fessenden to sell the patent to the Geophysical Research Corporation.

     Karcher, along with Eugene McDermott, William Ted Born, and Dr. Fabian Kannestine, built the first crude seismic instruments.  The first set of GRC refraction instruments was started in June of 1925. A few days before the start of 1926, the first set of seismic instruments was tested near Bloomfield and then shipped by rail to Houston. The equipment underwent tests across the Spindletop salt dome in February of 1926. In 1933, DeGolyer and Karcher tabulated the number of salt domes found by geophysical means during the six-year period 1924-1929. Refraction seismology found 44 salt domes and 11 were found by the torsion balance.

For more information, see the articles:

• "Comment on J.C. Karcher's 'The Reflection Seismography'",  George, Elliott, Sweet,  The Leading Edge, Nov., 1996, p. 20.

• APPLIED GEOPHYSICS, W. M. Telford, L. P. Geldart, R. E. Sherric, D. A. Keys,  Cambridge University Press, 1976, pp. 219-220.