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The Rise and Fall of the Gasometer
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- čas přidán 13. 04. 2014
- tomscott.com - @tomscott - In towns and cities across Britain, Europe, and occasionally the rest of the world, there are still some odd circular scaffolding structures. And younger viewers might not know what they are -- or why there aren't many left.
I have ALWAYS wondered what those were. People used to say “it’s the old gasworks” then never elaborate. I was always like “it’s scaffolding, how can it hold gas?!”
I used to think there antennas or something legit only seems like scaffolds
I wondered the exact same thing when I visited the UK years ago!
Same re: one in Dublin. Never would have guessed the main tank sinks into the ground.
I was explained like “a big tank rises” so when I actually saw how the tank was but before that I imagined a propane tank on a platform rising😂💀
Literally
Yeah, there is one near me. In fact, I'm currently in it. And to make things even better, I'm also lying on my bed as I write this ^^
I live in one of the the gasometers of Vienna, which were turned into flats and a shopping mall when they were no longer used. And that is something you might not have known :p
I read that in Tom's voice
Stanislav me too
Just did it automatically without thinking
Niki Herl nice. I'm going to research
I used to go to orchestra rehearsals in there!
Sorry, I just saw this video. But I really want to take a moment to appreciate a wonderful episode title.
Ah. That's quite clever.
Story Feet why
Goatfood it's like the rise and fall as in why they became popular and then became less popular and are now being demolished, and then like the physical rise and fall since they would go up when there was more gas in them and go down when there was less gas in them
Jack Rhodes oh God 😕😝😂😊 how embarrassing, I've think I'm turning thick! Thanks!
lunn photos you didn't do it right
An interesting fact! The English gasometers used an automated graphing system to track the pressure in the tanks over time. When the volcano Krakatoa exploded in 1883, the airborne shock waves were so incredibly violent, they actually circled the Earth several times. The English gasometers acted like gigantic barometers, and their pressure graphs actually recorded the passing of these shock waves as short term pressure increases; airborne shock waves from the other side of the planet!
Waiting for all the flat earthers now...
@@macky4074 the Shockwave hit the rim and bounced back take that Globe heads
Amazing little fact.
😮 wow
I certainly did know what gasometers were, but I did not know this little fact! Fascinating!
I just realized the title is a pun. Well played.
Ethan what pun
Goatfood rise and fall. Like the level of gas.
Vlodec that’s literally what a pun is tho
Took me a couple watches, too.
I knew it was a pun before I clicked.
An interesting detail about the moving piston type is the seal between the piston and the wall. It's not only a gasket, that would leek too much. Oil is constantly pumped from a sump at the bottom of the gas holder and injected at the top inside of the wall. The oil runs down the wall and is caught by the piston. A pool of oil is formed around the perimeter of the piston so the gap between the piston and the wall is covered with oil. Some oil leaks past the piston and continue down the wall to the sump and is then pumped up again. The oil makes the seal perfectly gas tight.
@skunjobb That is very interesting. There used to be one of these off the I405 in Long Beach, CA.
They had two of these right next to my secondary school. Would often imagine them blowing up and destroying the school :D
You were a happy child
+Atomic Robo Tesla. Yes
We had one at the bottom of our school hill that caught fire and we all had to be evacuated to an exclusion zone. It didn't blow up in the end (unfortunately). All that's left now is the burnt frame.
They don't explode, only catch fire.
One blew up at Valby back in 1964. 100 000 window panes were broken in a 5 km radius.
There's one of these in South Philadelphia where I was born, I remember seeing it "inflated" as a kid, but its sat around empty for the last ~15 years, I never knew what it was for. Thanks Tom
I used to lived near one in Hackney. Every once in a while a leaflet would arrive telling local residents what to do in an emergency. I guessed the only thing we would be able to do is burn. I remember as a child in the 60s/70s I noticed that the holders were very low on Sunday afternoons - the days when almost every family would cook a 'Sunday Roast'
Actually they COOKED coal to make coal gas with the bi-product, coke, being sold to foundries and steel works.
Also sold to Aga users.
And residences. The price was less than coal because around 1/2 the energy was gone.
And the coke was then bottled and sold to consumers to quench their thirst.
I remember ‘cooking’ coal in a chemistry lesson to identify the gas that came off - blimey the lab smelled just like a gasworks, horrible.
Ok Albert
Here in Ostrava, Czech Republic, they turned one into a multifunctional auditorium.
+ID:107 Here in Dedemsvaart, the Netherlands too.
Missread that as "a malfunctioning auditorium".
Same in Germany, Oberhausen. Probably one of the most famous one
In Vienna they turned a few Gasometers into apartments and a shopping centre. It looks really cool :)
I'm old enough to remember these and the smell of the old "town gas" made from coal. They are called "gasometers" because not only were they storage tanks but, by measuring the height of the tank, you can measure the gas available in storage. Tom didn't mention that the cylinder that rose and fell, inside the scaffolding., was actually like an upside down bucket floating in a bath of (smelly) water. Sometimes at home we used to burn coke rather than coal in our living room open fire. I think this was the product after the gas had been removed from coal as least that's what my dad said - so it must be true ;)
Coke was indeed a by-product of making town gas. The iron & steel Industry required huge amounts of coke so it was made specially in coking plants, the by-product was town gas, although I'm not sure if they actually fed it into the local gas system or used it to roast more coal.
And this is why coke a cola has gone up in price as we move to renuable energay sources.
Wow, there's a difference between coke and coal? Since I only ever heard my parents and other trashy people use the term "coke", I always assumed that it's the slang term for "coal"...
Learning so much today... ;)
Coke definitely was a by product of the gas industry and it was dirt cheap. Before the days of Health and Safety dad used to send us to the gasworks with an old pram and for a few pennies beer money the chargehand would let us pull the chute lever and drop half a hundredweight of coke at about a 100 degrees into it.
@@notthere83 Yes coke is an extremely pure fuel almost entirely carbon made by roasting coal without Oxygen to drive out the impurities like sulphides etc. The resulting product burns quite a lot hotter so it's useful for things like blast furnaces that need to burn at very high intensity.
We have a popular one in Germany in Oberhausen which is nowadays used for special exhibitions which change every one to two years. A few years ago they installed a sphere with 25 metres of diameter floating in mid air on which they projected maps of the earth or the moon. You could just walk around and under it or take a glas elevator to see it from above. Or once the artist Christo build a 26 metres high wall out of colorful barrels which divided the gasometer as an art project. You should check it out if you are here in the west of Germany.
I knew they rose and fell, but not at that frequency. Very informative.
There was a large one on the San Francisco Bay. When they tore it down., my friend lost his night sailing navigation aid. Lots of red aircraft safety lights on it.
Ooooooh! I've wondered what those were.
And at once you gave voice to all our minds!
I was born in 98 but i definitely remember seeing some of these and noticing the height changing. Knowing they are obsolete and no longer use makes me feel old
There's one of these in Dublin that's had apartments built inside it. It looks really cool, all glass inside the metal structure, it's a pity that they can't find new uses for the ones in England that they're tearing down. It used to be visible from Lansdowne Road stadium but I think the roof on the new stadium blocks it.
nicholas keane I think an odd shaped room IS cool.
Thanks for explaining those. When I was living in the south of Rome about two years ago, there was a big gasometer near me that could be seen from very far away - in fact it's one of the reference points that I could use to spot the district I lived in from the Castel Sant'Angelo on the other side of the city. Now I finally know a bit better how they were used.
your voice seems a little de synced in certain parts
Yeah
Whole reason I scrolled through the comments
Literally just type that. So I'm not seeing/hearing things.
I used to have one in my town. We had a little competition to see who could see it first and shout "Gasworks" when we drove past it.
those were the days...
Kombaiyashii kaisaer sousae
Wouldn't that be quite easy after a handful of times though, when you all know exactly when it comes up? Assuming, of course, you didn't suffer from dementia
A couple of big ones in Queens always used to be mentioned in NYC traffic reports as the "Elmhurst Tanks", because they were a prominent landmark for people driving the western portion of the Long Island Expressway. I never heard them called "Gasometers", though. That may be a British term. I didn't know they physicically rose and fell, either.
A full eight years on and I’m rewatching another TYMNK because someone posted an old pic of one of these in my town.
Thanks again, Tom
I've only just found this video. My dad used to work at Battersea Gas station, controlling the input and output to the gas holders (not gasometers) , through a series of valves manually operated by "steering wheel" like handles. These "valvemen" used to estimate the amount of gas in a holder by counting the number of plates and their rivets showing as the holders went up and down.
There's a couple of these near my hometown (Romford). Wondered why they stopped going up and down ~10 years ago :(
I remember the moment I learned what those were.
I was maybe 6 years old and I was in a car driven by my dad, went right past one.
So, I asked what it was and he knew the right answer o.o
Hence why this is something I already knew sadly =P
0dWHOHWb0 not that dad, you had a dad
Another lesson, which you may have already learned after 3 years, is you don't need to say why after you say hence.
Yes! Thanks Tom! Every time I've traveled to England I've asked to learn what those structures were for. No one has been able to tell me until now.
Nice video, Tom. My favourite use for the site of demolished Gasometers, was the site on Horseferry Road and Monck Street - there were two huge wartime citadels called 'The Rotundas', which were used by various departments during the war, mainly the Air Ministry. After the war, they were still in use for cold war purposes, and were hidden under the ugly Department Of The Environment towerblocks. The site was cleared in 2003, with the Rotunda bunkers being almost impossible to demolish.
I remember when I was small I used to love watching how much they would rise and fall. I was astonished by how big they were too. I've seen one out towards Heathrow that seems to rise and fall still but I might be mistaken.
We still have active gasometers in Swindon so we must be more old-fashioned here than I thought.
Where? The ones on Gypsy lane and the one on Great Western Way have all gone.
cjmillsnun Turns out we may not have any after all. I walk along Gypsy Lane every day to work, and could have sworn there was at least one still there, but when I made a point of looking, as a result of commenting here, it turned out that they had in fact all but gone.
They have one of these in Watford, I’ve always been curious as to what it is. This CZcams page is amazing.
Omg I can't believe I finally know what this is! Thanks so much for this video. I pass one of those empty scaffolding every day on my way to work. I've been wondering for over a year now why anyone would build suck a metal construction. Thank you!
The are actually called gas holders, I was at one time a holder engineer, there are only two left in working order in Britain
They are gas holders, you are right - but they are called gasometers.
As far as the general public were concerned, we always called them gasometers. "Gas holders" seems to be the technical term only used within the industry.
In Brisbane, Australia, they turned one into part of a public park, and it even lights up beautifully at night
you commented this twice a year apart
Only found out about these the last couple of days. Im studying architecture in Cardiff and been looking into the Library of Birmingham and it's external black cladding is apparently inspired on gasometers, a hark back to the industrial days of the city I guess.
Great little video! Cheers!
Thank you very much for this video. I stayed in Manchester for 4 years as a student and never could figure out what these things are. Now I know, all thanks to you! One of my longing curiosity solved 👩🏻🚀
FINALLY! There is quite a large one situated on the commuter route I travelled and for years, I mean since I was a kid, I wondered what the hell it was. No-one I knew could say what it was, and trying to google a description of the object was simply futile.
So, THANK YOU Tom, the obsessive compulsiveness of trying to figure out what that object was can finally be laid to rest. [Edited to make more sense]
You could have looked up the area on Google Maps... I'm sure it would be listed as a Point Of Interest.
There are two of these things in Helsinki, and I always used to ask my parents what the purpose of this structure was. I think it was my dad who told me that they're used to store gas, but this revelation didn't really crack the mystery open for me as I didn't realize that this wasn't the entirety of the contraption.
The relics here haven't been in use since 1980, and sadly, the Helsinki gasometers will be demolished as well if the rumors that have been flying around turn out to be correct. I also read from somewhere that they'd be refurbished, but their ultimate fate still remains unclear. The older gasholder is over a hundred years old.
I pass one of them, I think, every time I go into Helsinki from Kotka: iirc, one of them's a mustard-coloured thing with the white bindings/linings on it,yes?
David Andrews Yes, it matches your description. If you search for "Suvilahden kaasukello" in Google's image search, you'll find a picture of it.
Suvilahti was a former energy production zone located in Sörnäinen, an eastern district of Helsinki. Suvilahti is now forming into a cultural centre, but the two gasometers as well as 9 other buildings related to the production of gas or electricity still stand there.
They actually cleaned the insides of the gasometer you mentioned. It contained a lot of terribly contaminated water which couldn't have been directly poured into the sewer without severe filtrations. 20 750 cubes of contaminated water was successfully removed and filtrated from within the gasometer, but according to experts it still contains approximately 400 cubic meters of water contaminated with PAH compounds, heavy metals, cyanide and mineral oil. It's not certain if people can ever visit inside the gasometer due to this hazardous contamination.
The gasometers will apparently not be demolished, as they are protected by the Finnish National Board of Antiquities. It has been estimated that repairing the gasometer well enough to accommodate visitors would cost ~8.7 million euros. So far efforts will only be made to make it look good on the outside. The work is scheduled to begin this year.
Suvilahti, translated directly, means "Summer bay" (suvi is a poetic/rarely used Finnish word for summer and lahti stands for bay). A very fitting name for a highly contaminated industrial zone.
Yes! The Metro train passes it before heading to the station there.... Thank you :)
And yeh - great name for such a place :P
My dad was a gasworks manager at Penicuik Scotland. In the 1950s they where called " gas holders " and they had " lifts " that were on tracks giving a partial corkscrew motion. The various lifts got slightly smaller in diameter as they progressed upwards and they had a water seal at each circumferential moving joint/junction. I knew quite a lot about them as a young lad as they were at the bottom of my garden and I had to call him from his office if they got a bit low. Correct in your statement about " line storage " but there are miles of it up and down the country before it is reduced in pressure for appliance requirements. Life moves on!
As an American who almost exclusively watches British programming, I have often wondered about these structures. Thanks for the interesting information.
These things were everywhere when I was a boy. I remember the conversion to natural gas which was a big deal at the time - like decimalisation.
No more dying of carbon monoxide poisoning from leaving the gas on.
Decimalisation was a big deal - the price of a Cadbury's Flash bar went from 2d to 2p overnight, a 140% price increase!
what year was that?
Here in Dresden and some other eastern german cities they got turned into something called a "Panometer", a madeup word out off Panorama and Gasomete. There they are showing giant panoramas of historical events with kind of like a museum around it.
I've heard of the Dresden Panometer by Yadegar Asisi. I bet it is amazing to see in person.
Oberhausen
Thank you Tom! I've moved to London recently and been wondering what they were, especially today after watching some Londonist with a number of them in the back. I've got one just down the road from where I live.
Saw these in the show Life on Mars. Being from the U.S., I had no idea what they were. Thanks Tom. Your videos are great.
I remember there being some collapsible tanks like these in St. Louis, Missouri as a kid. I don't know what purpose they served.
Finally I know what they are now! Thank you.
I would always see these in the background of films and TV shows filmed in England and used to wonder what they were. My guess was some old form of broadcast antenna. Thanks for finally solving the mystery!
One near where I love, the Starlings love it - especially in Summer when the migratory population arrives.
It's tall with plenty of perches, but the sociable birds can all communicate easily.
Depressingly I'm old enough to remember gasometers - I think in the 80s they were still used to regulate gas pressure, if not to store manufactured coal gas.
I have one near me. It still works and smells of gas.
+DocWiltshire Nope Hampshire actually
Louis Gordon Southampton?
There is one in Sheffield
Louis Gordon something that stores gas smells of gas??
@@invalide something people might not know, gas itself does not smell of anything - they add Butyl Mercaptan to make a very easy to detect and distinct smell to make leaks easier to smell.
Thanks for that Tom
We were on about the Boston Molassacre and my mum said the tank looked like a gasometer and, lo and behold, you have a video on those.
1 near me in Bendigo Central Victoria Australia, its being preserved and recently had a huge tidy up of the grounds and have started giving tours. It only ceased operation in 1973, and was used as a dumping ground for bulky things and even old trams of which some are still there waiting for restoration
in london they've become beautiful apartments :)
OH MY GOSH there are two of these in my town (Bathurst, nsw, Australia) and i could never work out what they were!!
Right next to the old gas works... of course.
also, our whole gas works is a heritage listed building, but it hasn't been restored at all, so it is slowly being reclaimed by ivy and trees, and is unsafe and illegal for anyone to do anything about it.
Thanks Tom! I'm watching Emergency! Season 2, episode 16 "Syndrome".
It has one of those types of frames that the tank moved up and down in. I'd never heard of such a thing......
A long held mystery (to me) solved! there was one of these in Brisbane (Aus) when i was a boy and i never found out what it was until now. i could never understand why at different times the tank was up or partway up the scaff. thank you for enlightening me.
The Gasworks in my town were still operating in 1986, the gasometers, accumulators whe called them, are still in pretty good condition, they are the staffolding type.
milksheihk There's some in my town as well.
+milksheihk One in my city was still operating when I was wee, in the late 90s. My dad would occasionally take me to the roof, or the hill that overlooks the whole city, and point it out - it would sometimes be full, sometimes, be nearly empty and the top would be quite low down.
I recently discovered that the reason the one in my town wasn't demolished & is all fenced in & locked up is because old gasworks of this type are full of toxic tars & to use excavators or other demolition equipment that disturbs the soil will spread the toxic tars.
That's what they're called!! Do you know how long I've been trying to search on Google with terms like 'big round scaffolding' and the like?!
Thanks for sharing. I have seen few structures like these around london but always used to think what were these, now mystery is solved.
There was one in Berlin too. They kept the frame and built a TV studio at the bottom of it where ARD hosts a terrible talkshow every sunday. In Dresden and Leipzig an artist uses old gasometer buildings to show giant panorama paintings. So there is still a lot of use for gasometers without needing to tear them down.
"but perhaps their heating as well" I love the British attitude towards heating as being optional. And by love I mean hate. I was literally freezing my first year here.
No point heating the house when everybody's out at work and school.
Playing Assasin's Creed Syndicate i was wondering what those things were... now I know.
I never seen one since here in Australia none have existed as far as I am aware, at least not in my life.
We had them too. There's a few still about. Some have been preserved and converted to public spaces.
They were common in Australia until there were replaced by Natural Gas piped directly from the gas wells., we had 3 of them nearby at the Highett Gas works opposite Southland shopping centre in Melbourne which is now a park, before that homes used "rock gas" (acetylene) but it was even more dangerous.
Used to be a couple in Dunedin.
I've seen these in pictures before, and always wondered what they were. Thanks for that.
Great vid! In Brisbane our gasometer has been gentrified into a set of restaurant’s inside of it called the gasworks!
Thank God the one at The Oval, arguably the most famous one in the UK, is listed.
The audio seems to be out of sync,
Yeah same here
In 1927, in Pittsburgh, PA, there was a very large gasometer that had a leak. So they went looking for it - with a blowtorch. Needless to say, disaster ensued....
The cleverness of the title of this video is amazing!
We had ALOT of those in Southern California.
"A lot" - two words - not "alot". There's no such word as "alot".
Sorry, it's late and I'm feeling pedantic.
A seemingly precarious place for a gasometer was near Detroit City Airport (Coleman Young Airport), only 500' (150m) from an airport runway!
No longer there.
Excellent presentation, thanks
I am sitting in the middle of one in my crane in Birmingham demolition three, the workmanship that went into this structure is amazing
God-damn, is the title a pun?
Nick Dawson what pun
Goatfood Gasometers go up and down? "Rise and fall"? Eh?
Nick Dawson yeah ha ha someone explained it to me, thanks. I think I'm turning stupid smh
So THAT's what they are!
My dad explained these thoroughly to me on the train into B'ham New St, where I've always wondered about these odd empty structures by the tracks near the station. One sneakily clever title on this video, btw.
Oh! So that's what that is used for!
Sometimes I go by those structures and had no clue what they where used to.
Thanks!
We had a twin pair of these near my neighborhood which were removed around 2007. Shrewsbury, MO
Thank you! There is one of those in Brisbane Qld and I always wanted to know what it was!!!!!
Funnily enough it's now part of a shopping precinct called Gasworks.
Thank You! I always see these on the train to Victoria and never have known what they were. Thank you
I learned something new. Thank you. There is one of these frames in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia that has been preserved and is the framework for a park. At night it is lit 'artistically'.
I remember these things as a kid also but never noticed the old tanks. I just thought it was the framework for a reservoir.
awesome series!! I actually learn something, thank you!
We used to have those in Toronto, the gas plant is now a police station. The biggest in the world were in Queens, New York and were demolished many years ago. There's still several of the scaffolds along Old Kent Road in Southwark, London.
Keep the good work up. Thanks for the knowledge
Thanks for the explanation. Always wondered what those were.
I do not know for sure about British gasometers but here in Denmark they were floating in water. When gas was pumped in, water was expelled and the tank rose from the water (and the other way round when more gas was used than produced). The water made a gas-tight fit. The weight of the tank pressurised the gas.
Maybe this is interesting to you: in Vienna, we still have a Gasometer, which are three towers next to each other, but it was turned into a complex that includes a mall, restaurants, flats, a gym, music store and a cinema aswell as a big concert location! The nearest station is also still called Gasometer.
I remember one near us in Glasgow, Scotland when I was kid back in the late '60's. My most vivid memory of it was the horrendous smell whenever I had to walk past it.
There is one in Buenos Aires, it has been converted to a warehouse. It had been in operation from the 1900 and i think from the 60s-70s been out of commission.
There used to be some of these right by my grandmothers house. A very quiet backstreet in Eastbourne.
When I stayed there in summer I could hear them creaking as they slowly raised or lowered, and banging with expansion and contraction as the temperature changed night and day. Terrifying when you’re about 5 and you don’t know what it is.
Finally! As a kid, I had always wondered what those things were sitting in the back of my parents car as we drove past motorways and such. Fascinating.
a dangling participle ? :)
I often wondered what they were, I thought the empty ones were from oil tanks that had been removed. Thanks again, love your videos!!
Thanks for the info! There was something similar on Long Island (NY,) when I was a kid. I figured the storage buildings must rise and fall within the framework, but that seemed impossible (as a kid.)
So Awesome! I have been wondering this for years and wondered how the hell they worked! Turns out that these 'gasworks skeletons' are little more than scaffolding to support a glorified piston that no longer works! :) Nice to know, cheers for the video :)
I watch cricket and there is one of these structures by the oval that you can see in every game played at the oval. Now I know what it is (or was, rather) .. the gasometer outside the oval is definitely not in service but the tower will remain because it has been declared a heritage site due to pressure from the public in general and the cricket fans that go to the oval in particular.. it gives the oval that distinct background, making it instantly recognizable in any photograph.
Absolutely right. I just went to see the Gasometer at the Oval - it definitely gives Oval cricket stadium the distinct look that seeing in the pictures of century old games
Thank you! I live in the central US, where we extract natural gas from the ground, so I didn’t even know coal gas was a thing. I kept seeing these things as places the body is going to be near on various UK crime dramas, but could not figure out their real purpose.
Thank you for this. I had never seen one before I visited Rome a few months ago, had no idea what it was, and no one I asked had an answer.
In Adelaide, oz, there was two gasimomitor on Port.Road Hindmarsh. The outer brick work is still there, the frame long gone. The Gaslight pub still has it's door open.
We have 2 of them in the city I live in, old and made of orange bricks. They have been converted to be used as concert and theater venues now. And the area also houses an annual metal festival. So it's pretty cool. :)
“Rise and fall” - I see what you did there ;) and I liked it :D
We have one in Blackpool that is still in use. During meal times or Christmas, they sit really low because people are cooking.