Ancient Chinese Drill with Bamboo Wheel

Han Dynasty salt miners in the First Century B.C. were the first to build derricks and use cast iron drill bits within bamboo drills to dig holes as deep as 4,800 feet into the Earth in search of brine, which they would extract from below with bamboo tubes. Chinese communities fashioned bamboo into pipelines to transport natural gas to light their capital, Peking, as early as 400 BC. Centuries later around 347 CE, the first-known oil wells in China were created by combining iron drill bits with bamboo pipe.