Sylvanus Freelove Bowser: the pump inventor's own record

1854–1938 · THE PATENT TRAIL BEHIND THE PUMP

The inventor: The Business section tells S. F. Bowser & Company; this entry keeps the man and his patents. Sylvanus Freelove Bowser (8 August 1854 – 3 October 1938), a Fort Wayne man who had worked as a traveling salesman, first devised a wooden plunger for drawing water from a well and applied the same principle to the dangerous business of drawing kerosene from a barrel. The first pump was sold on 5 September 1885 to Fort Wayne grocer Jake Gumper — a kerosene pump, as this history's account “Bowser invented the gasoline pump in 1885.” corrects the usual telling — and the patent followed: U.S. Patent No. 372,250, "Storage and Measuring Tank for Volatile Liquids," filed 21 June 1886 and granted 25 October 1887. The trail runs on through his working life: the measuring-pump improvement No. 480,552 of 9 August 1892; a heating device for storage tanks in 1904; pump operating means in 1910; filings abroad, including a British application of 1912 for apparatus for measuring and delivering liquids. The gasoline form arrived in 1905, the "Self-Measuring Gasoline Storage Pump," with a hose to deliver fuel directly into a car's tank — the apparatus a Bowser employee is credited with naming the "filling station" (“Bowser invented the gasoline pump in 1885.” carries the coinage's exact state). Detzer's memoir of the town, quoted in Dewan's patent history, remembers the self-measuring pump works as one of the three businesses that defined the new Fort Wayne, and gives 1914 for the renaming of the street as Bowser Avenue. In Australia and New Zealand the word outlived the company entirely: a fuel pump there is still simply a "bowser."

Sources:

1. U.S. Patent No. 372,250 (25 October 1887), via the Business section's patent citation — the storage and measuring tank, filed 21 June 1886.
2. Dr. Mohan Dewan, "History of Fuel Pump Patents — Sylvanus Bowser Tribute" (rkdewan.com) — the wooden-plunger origin, No. 480,552 of 1892, the 1904–1912 patent trail including the British filing, the Detzer memoir and the 1914 street renaming.
3. Pioneers Resting in Historic Lindenwood (Fort Wayne Public Library, 1989) — Bowser (1854–1938), founder and longtime president, inventor of the self-measuring gasoline pump, firm begun 1885.
4. American Car Historian and Richmond Auctions' pump histories — the 5 September 1885 first sale and "bowser" surviving as the generic word for a fuel pump in Australia and New Zealand.
5. “Bowser invented the gasoline pump in 1885.” — the kerosene correction and the state of the "filling station" coinage.