69 Feet, or, the most consequential change moment lost to history

If I asked you to name the single most consequential change in the history of modern life, you might say the industrial revolution. The printing press. The internet. You'd be wrong.... Or rather, you'd be downstream from THIS event.

The thing that actually changed everything happened on a Saturday afternoon in 1859, at the bottom of a 69-foot hole in northwestern Pennsylvania. The man who made it happen was a retired railroad conductor with no geology training, no engineering credentials, and no particular reason to believe that anything he was doing would work. You almost certainly don't know his name.

This is the story of Edwin Drake. I would argue he might be the most consequential change agent in modern history that almost nobody has heard of. And it's also about what his story has to do with the thing *you're* waiting to try.