J. Clarence Karcher
| John Clarence Karcher | |
|---|---|
| Born |
April 15, 1894 Dale, Indiana
|
| Died | July 13, 1978 (aged 84) Dallas, Texas
|
| Residence |
 United States
|
| Nationality |
American
|
| Institutions | Concho Petroleum Company |
| Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania |
| Notable awards | Gold Medal by the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers |
John Clarence Karcher (June 4, 1894 – July 13, 1978) was an American geophysicist and businessman. He invented and eventually commercialized the reflection seismograph, applying for patents on this in 1919. In doing this he created the means by which most of the world's oil reserves have been discovered. In 1930 he and Eugene McDermott founded Geophysical Service Incorporated, a pioneering provider of seismic exploration services to the petroleum industry. This company later spun off what would become Texas Instruments.
John Clarence Karcher was born on April 15, 1894 in Dale, Indiana. He was the son of Leo and Mary (Madlon) Karcher. When he was five the family moved to Oklahoma Territory and settled in a farming community near Hennessey. In 1912 he earned a high school diploma.
As an undergraduate Karcher attended the University of Oklahoma where in 1916 he received a B.S. degree in both Electrical Engineering and physics and was at the head of his class. When the university was granted a chapter in 1918, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Upon graduation Karcher accepted the Tyndal Fellowship in Physics at the University of Pennsylvania where he began graduate work in September 1916. For his Ph.D. thesis he studied X-ray emissions. World War I interrupted his graduate studies and he served with the United States Bureau of Standards. His assignment was to locate heavy artillery batteries in France by studying acoustic waves the guns generated in the air. He noted an unexpected event in his research and switched his concentration to seismic waves in the earth. He thought it would be possible to determine the depth of underlying geological strata by vibrating the Earth's surface while precisely recording and timing the returning waves of energy. On October 16, 1920, Karcher married Lydia Kilborn; they had two children.
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