The History of John J. Tokheim (cont'd)
J.J. Tokheim's Personal
History:
John J. Tokheim was born in the small village of Odda, (Hardanger Bay)
Norway, in 1871. He came to the United States as a young man of sixteen in
1887, paying for his passage by working for ten months on an Iowa farm
located near Thor, Iowa.
The following two summers he continued farm work, and during the winter
months he attended school and earned his room and board by doing chores on
the farm. From 1890 to 1894 he served an apprenticeship as a sheet metal
worker, earning $50.00 per year and studied sheet metal drafting at night.
He earned room and board by doing extra work such as cleaning the tin shop
and hardware store after closing. From 1894 to 1896 he studied the "tinners
trade" and worked in the local hardware store. He also attended a
commercial business college in Des Moines, IA and worked as a sheet metal
fabricator in a Chicago factory during this time period.
Late in 1896 he returned to Thor, IA to start his own sheet metal works,
machine shop, water pump service, and a retail hardware store. Over the
next year he gradually added a complete stock of hardware, well pumps, and
began to handle kerosene and gasoline for lamps and stoves.
In the spring of 1898, Mr. Tokheim conceived the idea that it would be
safer to store the gasoline underground outside the store building and he
built a tank for that purpose. He then piped the gasoline into the store
where he attached a crude pump adapted from a water pump. This led to the
invention of what proved to be the world's first known "Visible
Measuring Pump", and he obtained a U.S. Letters patent on this new
pump in January of 1901. This method of storing gasoline underground for
safety, and dispensing it through an indoor hand-operated pump soon became
universally accepted throughout America. (It should be noted here that S.
F. Bowser had already developed this concept for safe storage and delivery
of gasoline a few years earlier. What made the Tokheim
gas pump stand out from
the competition was its ability to accurately measure the quantity of
gasoline delivered and determine the cost of the gasoline to the customer
through a calibrated visible glass cylinder.)
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