Hugh B. Williams Manufacturing Company also built tunneling machines, mine-raise drilling machines and other special drilling rigs for boring large diameter shafts in the earth.

During the eleven years while employed at Hughes, Parker was responsible for the structural design and manufacture of many products, including earth boring machines, shaft drilling rigs and big-hole drilling tools.

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Mr. Parker designed the structures for the "Betti I", the first laser guided tunneling machine and U. S. Patent #3,345,108was issued as the co-inventor with Elmer Newman for this unique design. The "Betti I" was first used to drill a twenty-two foot diameter tunnel over two miles long in hard rock formations near Farmington, New Mexico for a water diversion project at the Navajo Reservoir.

Mr. Parker designed the structures for the Large Diameter Rigs, LDR's, having a large a-frame mast and using a Wilson oilfield drawworks for hoisting. The drilling machinery was mounted on a trailer. It was first used to drill a series o ventilation shafts for coal mines near Coalwood, West Virginia.

He also designed the structures for the CSD-820, a drilling rig used to drill 96" diameter shafts to a depth of up to 2000 feet. The mast was capable of being tilted to allow the drilling of shafts on angles of up to 45 degrees. The rig was used in many locations: Lake Mead, Nevada for drilling shafts in the lake bed to provide water to Las Vegas through a tunnel; Lake Powell, Arizona for drilling several 60" diameter shafts on a 15 degree slant from the banks of the lake for access to the lake water for a pumping station supplying water to a local power generating station; Paducah, Kentucky for drilling shafts in the Ohio River bed to construct the foundations for the new I-24 bridge project.

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE Road-Bor in traveling position. Ready to drill. Bret Diedrich and finished "cookie." "Cookie" lifted from hole with tongs.

He also designed the structures for the "Road Bor", a truck mounted hydraulically powered drilling rig used to cut 60" diameter openings in the city streets of Brooklyn, New York to expose leaking natural gas lines for repair crews.

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The big-hole tool product line included the design and production engineering for large bore swivels, kellys, drill strings, drill collars, stabilizers, casing elevators, crossover subs and many other tools utilized in drilling large diameter holes in the earth with sizes up to twenty five feet in diameter.

Mr. Parker has visited the Nevada Test Site at Mercury, Nevada on many occasions assisting REECO, LASL, LRL and DOD developing new and improved products for the rigs used to drill the large diameter shafts and tunnels where the nuclear devices used in the underground testing program were detonated.

Parker also designed the 13-9/16" square kelly used in the drill string of the Parker Drilling Company big-hole drilling rig used to drill the 120" diameter shafts to over 5,000 feet deep on the remote island of Amchitka in the Aleutians Islands. A nuclear device was lowered into the shaft and detonated by the Department of Defense to calibrate the instruments used at the listening stations in the Pacific Ocean.