The first petrol pump in Enschede
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Traffic jam reports have become a daily reality. Despite the intricate road network that is spread over our countryside like a spaghetti blanket. Yet car mobility is a relatively new phenomenon. A hundred years ago it was an individual who traveled in a gasoline-powered vehicle. Enschede - a very wealthy city at that time - was there quite early. It was Willem Helmig van Heek, the third son of Gerrit Jan, who introduced the automobile in Enschede in 1899. Three years after the first one in the Netherlands and fourteen years after Carl Benz built the first gasoline-powered ‘motor car’. It would take another 23 years before the first petrol pump appeared on the streets.
‘Crazy number’ 11 did not become a license plate Statistics are funny when it comes to these kinds of topics. That first Enschede car - a Benz Comfortable - was the 69th in the Netherlands. License plates were issued in order. Helmig’s Benz had number 70, but the ministry in its wisdom had decided to skip ‘crazy number’ 11 in the issue. The Netherlands had a total of less than two hundred cars.
Infancy: canned gasoline Automobility was in its infancy, in every respect. That Benz ‘motor car’, from fourteen years earlier, was little more than an oversized three-wheeler with wire wheels. Helmig’s Benz resembled a carriage with the horse omitted. The tank was filled with bottles of petrol, purchased from a pharmacist or a first bicycle dealer who saw value in new-fangled innovations.
Around 1900 you could get carboys containing a few gallons of gasoline in larger cities. In 1905, blacksmith/bicycle dealer Wilhelm Gassner was the first to set up a petrol depot on the corner of Beltstraat and G.J. van Heekplein. Ten liter cans of gasoline were stored and sold there (16 cents per liter). Petroleum peddlers pushed carts through the streets that slowly contained fewer kerosene cans and more gasoline cans.
Gasoline storage only entailed the necessary risks. The stuff itself is not a fire hazard, but that does not apply to the vapor that comes off. Lighting in those days often came from kerosene lamps and with some oxygen added, such a store was ready in no time. Enschede had experience with fires in the city center, but yes: the progress…
The first gas pump America was ahead of the automotive forces and after a number of accidents, Gilbert & Barker developed the first underground storage in a tank there in 1911, with a ‘draining device’ above ground. The American-Belgian-Dutch American Petroleum Company (later Esso) brought the find to the Netherlands. A lot safer and very handy: a manually operated piston pump, a clock that indicates the number of liters, a hose to fill the tank.
In May 1922, Wilhelm Gassner was the first to receive a permit for the underground storage of a petrol tank, with a ‘draining device’. That’s what we would call a gas pump today. He has now moved: the first Enschede petrol pump is in front of ‘Tubantia garage’ at Noorderhagen 2.
After that it goes quickly. Just over three months later, Van de Linde follows with a pump at Haaksbergerstraat 314, and a month later another at Boddekampsingel 2. A canal that has only existed for three years. Fifteen years later, Shell installed the first electrically operated pump there. Pump and garage owner Herman Josef Roelofzzen is the first in the city to have it covered. The pump on the Boddekampsingel still exists.
A cautious start Between 1920 and 1940, Enschede issued about eighty Nuisance Act permits for the establishment of a petrol station. Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, a total of almost a hundred thousand cars drove on Dutch roads. All in all, a cautious start. Automobiles cost a few thousand guilders and, especially in the beginning, were mainly the toy for a very small upper class.
But a handful of visionaries recognized early on the enormous changes this strange thing would bring. Among them Cornelis Lely (of the Zuiderzee Works) and an Enschede mayor. More about that in the next episode.