Who made the first petrol pump?
First PETROL PUMP.
The first PETROL PUMP was made by ‘Sylvanus F. Bowser of Fort Wayne, Ind. and delivered to local store-keeper Jake Gumper on 5 September 1885. Despite the date, which coincided almost exactly with Karl Benz’s first attempts to fit an internal combustion engine to a horseless carriage; this ancestor of all petrol pumps had nothing to do with motoring or the motorist. Jake Gumper had drawn Bowser’s attention to a problem concerned with the retailing of kerosene, and more particularly of butter, that was bringing his name into poor repute with his more fastidious customers. The kerosene barrel, which leaked, stood next to the butter cask and complaints had been received that the butter tasted of paraffin. The simplest solution would have been to remove one of the casks to another part of the store; fortunately for posterity neither Gumper nor Bowser appear to have thought of this. Instead Bowser set to work in a barn next to the store, and devoted his mind to devising a means of dispensing lamp oil in given quantities. The result was a round tank with a cylinder soldered piston controlling two marble valves and wooden plungers was fitted inside the cylinder. When the wooden handle was raised, a gallon of kerosene flowed from the tank into the cylinder; when lowered the kerosene was discharged.
Although Bowser established a flourishing manufacturing concern to undertake production of his brainchild, the marriage of the petrol pump to the motor car did not come about for another 20 years. The first self-measuring pump designed specifically for motor spirit was introduced by S.F. Bowser & Co. Inc. at Fort Wayne in 1905.
Two other major developments of the company included the first petrol pump to register quantity on a clock dial, the Bowser Red Sentry of 1925, and the first pump to incorporate an automatic price indicator, marketed on 1 November 1932.
In Britain a hand-operated petrol pump was installed outside his Shrewsbury garage by F.A. Legge in 1914. The first automatic
