The Tuboscope Story

Tuboscope has it's roots in the Ventura Tool Company. This was a machine shop owned by Fritz Huntsinger in the late 1930s. The company was later renamed Pacific Tubular Inspection Company to perform Pipe Inspection. In 1938 , an employee was sent to Texas to expand the tubular inspection business in the Texas Oilfields. This was called the Tuboscope company of Texas and had its headquarters on Griggs Road in Houston.

Tuboscope became the name of the instrument and a verb synonymous for Pipe Inspection.

Milestones 1940 1950 1960 1990

In 1943, the local employees purchased Tuboscope with an agreement from Fritz Huntsinger that Pacific Tubular Inspection Company would retain the territory of California , Oregon and Washington. Tuboscope would have the rest of the country.

Eventually, Pacific Tubular Inspection would open an office in Celle, Germany and expand over the eastern hemisphere. This company would be known as Vetco and would eventually be owned by Baker Hughes.

In meeting customer requirements for Tubulars having to endure higher temperatures and pressures of downhole environment , a new coating plant was opened in 1944. This was in Houston , Texas and was formed under the name of Tube-Kote.

The advent of World-War II forced operators to re-use their tubular good as all steel production was re-directed towards war usage.

In 1946 , Tuboscope developed new Electronic equipment and techniques for tubular inspection and the first 'Sonoscope' unit was introduced.

Additional service were then being provided by Tuboscope. These included Pipe Straightening , Hydro-static testing and Hard Banding.

Subsidiaries operated in Canada , Mexico and South America.

Engineering , Administrative and Machinist were united in a new facility on Holmes road, Houston. The number of employees grew to 500.

In 1959 , the two companies , Tuboscope and Tube-Kote were consolidated and the company began trading as a publicly held company.

In 1963 , American Machine and Foundry Company (AMF) through a pooling of interest arrangement, acquired all the stock of Tuboscope company. Thus until 1988 , Tuboscope operated as a wholly-owned subsidery, AMF-Tuboscope Inc.

The company was privately held from 1988 until 1990 when it went public again. It was then traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the symbol TUBO.

In 1997 , the company started trading on the more prestigious New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TBI.

The next era of Tuboscope has begun with the DREXEL merger.

In each of its core product lines , Tuboscope is the market leader. A company with a long history in the Oil patch has positioned itself to move into the twenty first century.