How the first US-made electronic gas dispenser was produced...

Read Gene Mittermaier’s first hand account of the electronic gasoline dispenser and its prototype that was built on an engineer’s kitchen table.

My father had a theory that in the development of a new product, there will be at least two occasions when it will appear that the project will be canceled. Tokheim’s project to develop the first electronic fuel dispenser had four near-death experiences.

1971 was an exciting year to be working in electronics and with gasoline dispensers. That was the year that:

1. The Bomar Corporation introduced the first hand-held electronic calculator in the nation, the Bomar Brain, at a purchase price of $300. It was an instant hit, and expanded the boundaries of current technology. At Tokheim we speculated, “If electronics can be used in a calculator, why couldn’t they be used in a gas pump?”

2. RCA’s plant at Findlay, OH, manufactured an integrated electronic chip (looking similar to a square wafer). It measured 1/8 of an inch on a side and had the equivalent of 16 transistors. Before this time, you would have needed to solder 16 transistors onto a printer board to get the equivalent of what the integrated electronic chip from RCA provided. (Today’s chips are approximately 3/4 of an inch on a side, and there may be more than 500,000 transistors on one chip!)

3. The boom in self-service gasoline sales encouraged the building of “super pumper” stations, which appeared all over the US. Customers lined up in droves because the self-service gasoline cost less than it would have at full service prices. All of a sudden, eight dispensers at one service station might be called upon to handle more than 1 million gallons of gasoline a year. Because of the high gasoline usage demands at these stations, mechanical equipment began to break down. Purchasing agents for many oil companies became interested in making mass purchases of solid state electronic equipment (with no moving parts to break down).

4. The price of gasoline would soon exceed the $.499 limit of the mechanical pump computers of the 1960s, and the technology was not yet developed to replace it. With the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 and the ensuing surge in oil prices, service station managers were forced to manually add the price of gasoline over $.499 to the computerized amount when ringing up their customers’ orders. Although these four facts may seem to have little in common, they collectively set the stage for the introduction and enormous success of electronic fuel dispensers. This is the story of how Tokheim pulled off its coup to mass produce the first US-made electronic gasoline dispenser.

The “Milking Machine”
In 1971, Tokheim had a contract with Atlantic Richfield (today known as Arco) to build a new state-of-the-art service station near Chicago to be called Atlantic Richfield’s “Award” station. The specifications called for two 6-foot diameter canopy columns with three hoses and nozzles hanging down on the island sides of each column. Tokheim’s unofficial code name for the project was “The Milking Machine,” and it was the first station where Tokheim used the electronic dispensers.

The Award station’s specifications called for the customer displays to be remotely mounted on each end of the dispenser island, about 15 feet from the hanging nozzles. Each digit was 2 inches high and consisted of seven electromechanical segments that were flipped in or out of view to make each digit. Allard Corporation, which made the displays, manufactured similar displays for use on aircraft instrument panels. However, gasoline dispensers don’t have the vibrations of an aircraft; and, in use, the displays for the gas stations often stuck on certain numbers.

At first, Tokheim’s Engineering Department planned to use conventionally mechanical computers with money and gallon pulsers inside the 6-foot diameter columns at the Milking Machine. The pulses from each computer would drive electronic counting circuitry, which in turn would drive the display units to show the sales data to the customer.

This design provided easier visibility for customers, and had two big advantages: (1) For a better overall vantage point, the displays would be located at both ends of the island, 15 feet from the nozzles and meters instead of right next to the meters; and (2) the letters and numbers would be 2 inches high instead of 3/4 of an inch high, the height provided by a mechanical computer. However, the U.S. Department of Weights and Measures would not approve this mechanically-based system since it was capable of showing two different dollar amounts for the total amount of the sale. A discrepancy resulted from the differences in the times when a money pulse would occur relative to the gallon pulse.

Electronic computing
Earl M. Langston was a young electronic engineer at Tokheim who strongly believed that the computing needed to be done electronically, not mechanically. He suggested to the Tokheim engineer assigned to the Award station that a project be initiated to electronically calculate the sale price. The Engineering Department immediately turned down Earl’s idea, and he was told that “pump mechanics could never learn to service electronics in the field” (a common belief at the time). This was the first near-death experience for the electronic dispenser.

So, on his own time, Earl designed Tokheim’s first electronic computer prototype as a retrofit for the Atlantic Richfield’s Award station. Then he listed the electronic parts needed to build a prototype and asked the Engineering Department to approve a requisition to buy them. Again, his request was denied–the second near-death experience for the electronic dispenser.

This time, Earl jumped the chain of command and took his requisition to Dick Wheeler, the Vice President of Manufacturing and Engineering. Mr. Wheeler immediately saw the possibilities, and approved the requisition. So Earl ordered the components and wired the parts to a circuit board on his kitchen table. Then he hooked the board up to 11 “numitrons,” incandescent digital displays (or filaments like a light bulb), each with seven sections inside a glass tube. By lighting up combinations of the seven segments, the numbers between 0 and 9 can be lit. (This method was finally abandoned in 1979 because the numbers were difficult to read in bright sunlight.)

Earl created a prototype that could meet the U.S. Department of Weights and Measures’ requirement mentioned above. He made the prototype electronic fuel dispenser for Tokheim, and showed it to Art Richard, the Vice President of Marketing. Richard was so impressed that he helped to persuade the company to spend the money to develop a line of electronic dispensers. The project started in earnest in 1972.

Tokheim’s Model 158A Series dispensers had a revolving top that turned 350 degrees with a display that turned toward the customer’s vehicle during refueling. It didn’t look like a gas dispenser!

Near-death experience #3
In the spring of 1973, the Arab Oil Embargo cut off the supply of oil flow from the Middle East to the US. Because of the crude oil shortage, Tokheim went for six weeks without getting a single order for a new gasoline dispenser. This was near-death experience number three. ß The development of the electronic dispenser could have stopped there; but, instead, Tokheim went ahead at full speed. Production of two new model lines of electronic dispensers, using all solid state components, began in 1974.

Some improvements were, of course, made to the original kitchen table board. For example, in using Earl’s board, the first prototypes at the Award station required more than 80 wires to carry the data from the computer board to the customer displays, which were located about 15 feet away. This made installation cumbersome and costly. Bill Zabel, a talented laboratory technician, added a multiplex circuit that cut the number of wires to three in the next prototype generation. He redesigned the electronic computer so that it fit on an 8 inch square circuit board with three thumb wheel switches to set the price of gasoline up to $.999 per gallon.

Microprocessing glitch
The project was again nearly stopped a fourth time, in 1973, when the International Division of Tokheim discovered that a Dutch company was developing an electronic dispenser using a microprocessor. The International Division argued that the existing project should be scrapped, and then restarted utilizing a microprocessor.

Engineering insisted that the project was too far along to start over with different technology, and so the project went forward without a microprocessor doing the electronic computing. (The Department was already using a small microprocessor that could handle only four bit wide data to control a printer used to print truck stop receipts–Model 4004 from Intel Corporation.)

Having an electronic dispenser system without a microprocessor meant that many more chips needed to be used on the circuit board. In addition, Tokheim had to utilize “shift registers” (these act as a totalizing circuit); “Schmitt triggers” (the electronic equivalent to a light switch); and large scale integrated circuits (LSIs).

By 1979, microprocessors came into wide use in the second generation of electronic fuel dispensing systems. Since microprocessors operate on software, changes could be made much more easily and inexpensively by putting in new software, rather than by installing new wiring.

Tokheim’s Model 162 Series had a pulser in each dispenser that transmitted data to a solid-state computer at 1,000 pulses per gallons for accuracy. This is the same number of pulses per gallons used in today’s dispensers.

Early models
One man, Earl Langston, got the ball rolling on the electronic fuel dispenser. However, it took more than 25 people from engineering, manufacturing and marketing–putting in a great deal of extra effort for two years–so that the electronic fuel dispenser could be launched in 1974.

Tokheim’s first electronic fuel dispensers came in two models: 158 Series and 162 Series. Model 158 was 58 inches tall, and had a “swing head” that turned in what-ever direction the customer pulled the hose. The customer sales display was built into the swing head so that the display always faced the customer. However, this model was such a departure from the ordinary that it was only in production about three years. It just didn’t look like a gas dispenser!

Model 162 was 62 inches tall, and a more standard looking dispenser than Model 158. A revised version of Model 162, known as the Model 262 series, is still in production today. While Model 162 had 80 field wires, Model 262 needs only three because the computer is located right in the dispenser.

When electronic fuel dispensers were produced, they revolutionized the gasoline pump industry. First used at Atlantic Richfield’s “Award” station, these dispensers quickly became extremely popular throughout the US. In fact, the demand was so high for Tokheim’s first full-scale production of electronic dispensers that its market share of all fuel dispensers climbed from 25 percent in 1974 to 44 percent by 1976.

These dispensers were seen by many as a very visible symbol of the wave of the future in high tech equipment. Today, many pump manufacturers no longer make mechanical computer-type fuel dispensers; they have been effectively replaced by electronic computing dispensers.

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