Over the past couple of years, the word "fracking" has appeared in the news many times. What fracking is referring to is hydraulic fracturing, a new way of getting natural gas out of the ground. Hydraulic fracturing started to take off around 2006, and really hit its peak around 2014. Tons of companies in the US were making huge profits by participating in hydraulic fracturing.
Hydraulic fracturing itself is actually not new. It is actually a combination of fracturing and horizontal drilling (see figure above). Fracturing (started around 1950s) is the act of creating cracks in the walls of a oil well, which allows more oil/gas to flow out. Horizontal drilling (started in 1929) is referring to drilling a well horizontally (parallel to the ground), which allows the drilling company to new oil reservoirs not possible before. Combining these two technologies, drilling companies were able access new natural gas deposits that were hard to access previously.
Again, hydraulic fracturing illustrates the fact that combining two existing technologies can give birth to major technical breakthroughs.
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