Dresser Industries was a multinational corporation headquartered in Dallas, Texas, United States, which provided a wide range of technology, products, and services used for developing energy and natural resources. In 1998, Dresser merged with its main rival Halliburton. Halliburton sold many of former Dresser non "oil patch" divisions, retaining the M W Kellogg Engineering and Construction Company and the Dresser oil-patch products and services that complemented Halliburton's energy and natural resource businesses. In 2001 Halliburton sold five separate, but somewhat related former Dresser non "oil patch" divisions, to an investment banking firm. Those five operations later took the name "Dresser Inc." In October 2010, Dresser Inc., was acquired by General Electric. It is headquartered in Addison, Texas.

Solomon Robert Dresser invented a "packer", using rubber for a tight fit, and after taking out a patent on May 11, 1880, he began advertising and selling his product, the Dresser Cap Packer, from Bradford, Pennsylvania, in the heart of the oilfields. Dresser's packer was one of many available on the market, and it was another invention that saw a substantial expansion of the company. A flexible coupling, the Dresser Joint, that he built in 1885 to join pipes together in such a way that they would not leak natural gas. This coupling also used rubber for a tight fit, and it was so successful that it permitted for the first time the long-range transmission of natural gas from the gas fields where it was extracted to the cities which were the main gas consumers.

As the natural gas industry prospered and expanded after 1900, Dresser's company grew as pipelines were built over great distances. By 1927 the company's annual sales had reached US$3.7 million and it was employing 400 workers.

Following Dresser's death, his descendants decided to sell it, and in 1928 the Wall Street investment-banking firm of W. A. Harriman and Company, Inc., converted the firm into a public company by issuing 300,000 shares of stock. Prescott Bush, father of former US President George H.W. Bush, was involved in organizing the IPO and was on the board of directors of the company for 22 years. H.W. Bush began working in sales for the company in 1950.

H. Neil Mallon was selected as president and chief executive officer; he held that position until his retirement in 1962. Under Mallon, Dresser began a program of acquisitions designed to help it survive the threat posed to its core business by the introduction of welding for joining pipes together. Starting in 1930 Dresser began acquiring companies that manufactured valves, heaters, pumps, engines and compressors and the company diversified into such products as oil derricks, blowers, drill bits, refractories, and drilling mud.

In 1979, a partial nuclear meltdown occurred in at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, located on the Susquehanna River in Londonderry Township, Dauphin County near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in what became known as the Three Mile Island accident.

The accident began with failures in the non-nuclear secondary system, followed by a pilot-operated relief valve (PORV) that had been manufactured by Dresser Industries being stuck open and unable to be shut.

In 1976, prior to the Three Mile Island accident, Calvin J. Roach, a manager of industrial engineering was fired after being asked to investigate the failure of multiple Dresser valves and reporting the reason as being poor quality control. During a meeting with his boss who wished for him to retract his findings, Roach was called an ethnic slur for Cajuns to which he objected and was fired.