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To: LLCF who wrote (67447)	10/22/2013 2:55:10 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Comparing the first rollout of gasoline filling stations to trying to rollout electrict recharging stations now. The charging stations have the advantage of an existing electrical grid. The gasoline stations had the advantage of dense energy storage (gasoline is much denser in energy that the very best batteries even being imagined today let alone ones that are already mass produced). The very first cars or trucks traveling long distances probably had to carry extra fuel, and also refill in less convenient ways (not a gas pump, but some primitive pump or siphon and a gas tank somewhere). Then you would get some service stations, which outside of built up areas might be a hundred miles apart, but if you knew where they where you could drive very long distances without running out. Cars can go hundreds of miles, hundreds of miles more if you have an extra large tank or carry some extra supply. Electric cars (esp, ones that don't have extremely expensive lithium ion batteries, and esp in weather extremes) have much less range (and also less ability to carry an extra supply). The main advantage to gas stations proliferating for long distance trips is that by the time they did that you already had a lot of cars used locally. This doesn't address the earlier local proliferation in built up areas, which you now have with electric cars but to a lesser degree. At first people would likely refill from their own supply, or maybe from the person they bought the car from, with some primitive refueling setup, before there was anything that looks like the gas stations we see today.

To: LLCF who wrote (67447)	10/22/2013 6:27:20 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Gasoline Stations The history of the beginning of the drive-in filling station era is a bit gray. Early dispensing was done in various ways. Filling and measuring depended on the capacity of cans, buckets, drums which were used at first, then on to portable rotary pumps and on to actual gauges, graduated columns and meters. Also early sales of gasoline were carried out as sidelines by hardware merchandisers, drug stores, general stores, liveries (Zolli, 1994), and by curbside vendors and even by salesmen pushing the gasoline around in carts equipped with hoses. As the demand grew, brand names began to be highly visible and oil companies built fancy accommodations (the spic and span gasoline station) to serve their trademark gasoline to the motorists. The new pumps were modern-looking devices in their day and by having the oil company logo on the crown they were attractions in themselves. A few gasoline filling stations across the country opened for business around 1906-1907, but dispensing at that time was still done mostly by buckets and funnels. Some stations advanced into metered or graduated measures soon after 1911. Gilbert & Barker, a firm which manufactured storage tanks, brought out a line of curb pumps with measuring devices in 1911 (Hidy & Hidy, 1955), and the Beman Auto Oil Can Co. of Meadville, Pennsylvania, was already selling their New Improved Automatic Tank by that year. Standard Oil of California is said to have been the first to claim a filling station which they opened in 1907 in Seattle, Washington. No doubt this claim can be disputed but, to be fair, one has to define exactly what is meant by a filling station. In the early Seattle stations a thirteen-gallon filling tank was fed from the main storage tanks and the measuring into the patron’s tank was accomplished by a glass gauge on the filling tank (Hidy & Hidy, 1955). Giddens (1955) noted that Standard of Indiana opened a pump station for automobiles in Minneapolis in 1911, but the gasoline was pumped into cans and then poured into the vehicle’s tank. Imperial Oil had a service station in Vancouver, Canada, in 1908 (Hidy & Hidy, 1955). Standard also opened a curbside station having a rotary pump in Rockford, Illinois, in 1914. Northwest Pennsylvania, being the region of America’s first oil belt, got off to an early start in the sale of gasoline to motorists. petroleumhistory.org