I just ran across this thread and I thought I'd add a bit of my B&W stuff to it. I have B&W photos of my own that date back to the early 1980s and I have some from my father when he was stationed in Korea during the conflict. I'll post photos in sets to keep things organized. This first set here is some of my earliest work. During most of the 1980s, I worked for an oil compnay -- first Getty Oil Co, which was acquired by Texaco in 1984. These shots were taken when it was still Getty. The setting is the Kern River Field, a huge oilfield that lies just north of Bakersfield, California. Back then, we were producing over 100,000 barrels of oil a day from the field and it was a very complex operation to do this. The oil was produced via a "steam drive" where you had steam injector wells interspersed between the production wells. The crude oil in the Kern River Field is very thick, almost like tar at room temperatures, so injecting steam downhole not only thinned the oil so it would flow, but it provided a drive -- pushing the oil toward the producing wells. Back then we were generating steam by actually burning a portion of the oil we produced in steam generators that were located in groups throughout the field. The oil had all sorts of impurities, so we had to run the flue gas through these giant scrubbers to remove the impurities. I was a scrubber tech back then and we had to perform compliance testing as well as run maintenance checks on the scrubbers, so I was often out at the steam generator sites. These photos come from a few of my visits to some of the sites. The camera I was using back then was a Canon FTb. Lenses varied, but one of my favorites was a Canon FL 35mm f/2.5. For a "walking around" zoom, I was using a Vivitar Series 1 28-90mm f/2.8-3.5. The B&W film I used here was some cheap stuff I bought at a local camera shop. I think it was Foma, but I'm not sure. As I dimly recall, it was from Czecheslovakia. I developed it in D76 full strength.
The giant white plumes you see coming from the scrubbers are almost pure water vapor.
A scrubber tech climbing in the ladder cage
Compliance testing
View from the top walkway on a scrubber
Looking up at a scrubber plume
Steam generator convection sections
A row of steam generators
A steam generator induction fan -- about 5 feet tall
Insulated steam piping distribution
In about 1985, the field was converted over to natural gas to generate steam as part of a cogeneration project. Now, the field generates electricity from burning natural gas to spin steam turbines and the "waste" steam is used for the field's steam drive needs. So no more scrubbers or steam generators and no more having to burn a significant percentage of the production to produce steam.