The steel industry and coking processes used large amounts of these gasses or alternative fuels.

The Gasometer was built as a buffer: storing excess gas and releasing it again when demand exceeded production.

[2] When it was shelled by allied forces it did not explode, but the gas burned up and the pressure disc slowly descended.

In later years many coking plants and iron works closed, reducing supply as well as demand for the gas stored in the Gasometer.

In 1992 the city council of Oberhausen, with a margin of 1 vote decided to acquire the building and convert it to an exhibition space.

The main exhibition space, located on top of the pressure disc, was equipped with a stage and seating for 500 people.

[1] The exhibition "Fire and Flame" documented the history of the coal and iron industry in the Ruhr area and its influence on society.

[5] It was an installation by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, consisting of a stack of 13,000 oil drums in 7 colours, 68m wide, 26m high, and 7m deep, and weighed 234,000 kg.

An installation by Paul Schütze included a 50m high cone of water in an artificial lake, and video projections.

[4] This exhibition about space and the solar system was organised to mark the International Year of Astronomy.

[7] This exhibition showed the variety of beauty in art with almost 200 works as plaster casts or large-format photo prints from the Venus de Milo to McCurry's Afghan Girl.

65 feet) seemingly floated within the Gasometer, with moving satellite images projected on them showing the changes between day and night and the seasons.

The exhibition was designed in co-operation with the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt and focused on mountains, their creation, exploration, flora and fauna.

“The Fragile Paradise” took visitors on a journey through the climate history of our earth and showed in award-winning photographs and videos how the flora and fauna changed during the Anthropocene.

It shows scenes of the underwater world and was created by the people behind the art and technology festival Ars Electronica from Linz, Austria.

Here you can - without a diving suit or breathing mask - encounter huge schools of fish or even real-size sea giants.