Howard R. Hughes, Sr.

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Howard Robard Hughes, Sr. (September 9, 1869 – January 14, 1924) was an American businessman and the father of Howard Robard Hughes, Jr., the reclusive multi-millionaire. Hughes, Sr. created the fortune that Hughes, Jr. inherited at 18 years of age.

Hughes, Sr. was born in Lancaster, Missouri. His parents were Felix Turner Hughes and Jean Amelia Summerlin, who were married in 1865. His brother Rupert Hughes was a well known novelist and screenwriter.

Hughes was a classic entrepreneur, trying and failing at many endeavors before he finally found his niche. He was also classic in his disregard for the effect of his wide-ranging business travels and endeavors on his family. Hughes married in the early 1900s. He set out on his honeymoon with his bride, Allene Gano, on a trip around the world, and returned flat broke. Hughes lived in Houston, where Hughes Jr. also lived before his life in Los Angeles.

Before his marriage, Hughes attended Harvard, then studied law at the University of Iowa. He never graduated, but practiced law with his father. He pursued various opportunities, before he followed the Spindletop oil discovery to Texas, and entered the oil business. He patented a two-cone rotary rock drill bit that revolutionized drilling. It was unlikely that he actually invented the bit, but his law training helped him understand that the patent was the most important part of the financial life of any invention. According to the PBS show History Detectives, several other people and companies had produced similar drill bits years earlier.

He co-founded The Sharp-Hughes Tool Company with Walter Benona Sharp based in Houston, Texas in 1909, and bought full ownership of the company upon the death of Sharp in 1912. The essential asset of Hughes Tool was Hughes's patent for his tri-cone roller bit. The fees for licensing this technology were the basis of Hughes Tool's revenues. After Hughes Sr's death in 1924, Howard R. Hughes Jr. took the company over as its sole owner. Later Hughes Co engineers created a tricone bit and from 1934 to 1951 Hughes's market share approached 100 per cent. The bit found virtually all the oil discovered in the glory days of wildcatting, and Howard Junior got to be the richest man in the world. In 1972 he took the tool company public and made $150 million in cash the day it went on sale. [1]