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A shining facsimile of a drill bit, modeled after the Hughes Tool Company hard formation rock bit type R-1, was fashioned into a trophy for display, circa 1950. The two-cone rotary drill bit was patented by Howard Hughes’s father, Howard Hughes, Sr., for the Sharp-Hughes Tool Company, in Texas, in 1909. The bit soon became famous for oil production because it bored into hard rock far better and faster than any other bit. The invention made the Hughes family, of Texas, vastly rich. When Hughes, Sr. died in 1924 at age fifty-four, the nineteen-year-old junior Hughes inherited the family fortune and took over the business, renaming it the Hughes Tool Company.
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