The Industrial Beauty of Vintage Gas Pumps

In Italy, there's a museum dedicated to beauty of vintage petrol pumps

On the outskirts of Milan, Italy, the Fisogni museum is dedicated to petrol / gas station pumps and ephemera. The pumps are gorgeous. We like things with buttons, dials. Paint them in vivid colours and decorate them with fonts designed by leading graphic designers, and you’ve got cultural artefacts to cherish.

 

Petrol Pump

Bergomi Petrol Pump 1960

Guido Fisogni began his collection in the early Sixties with an old five-litre, double-vessel Bergomi gasoline pump, abandoned in a sand quarry.

“I decided immediately to recuperate and restore it, and since that moment more than thirty years ago, work and hobby now intermingled, I have been able to put together a collection which the experts of industrial art judge to be unique and particularly rich,” he says.

 

Petrol Pump

Bergomi, 1921

 

The earliest fuel pump was invented and sold by Sylvanus Bowser in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on September 5, 1885, was used to dispense kerosene for use in lamps and stoves.

The first gasoline pump was patented by Norwegian John J. Tokheim in 1901.

Early gasoline pumps had a calibrated glass cylinder on top. Fuel was pumped into the cylinder as indicated by the calibration. When you had the right amount, you stopped pumping and gravity took the gasoline into the customer’s tank. When metering pumps came into use, a small glass globe with a turbine inside replaced the measuring cylinder to show the customer that gasoline really was flowing into the tank.

 

Petrol Pump

Satam, 1940

Petrol Pump

Bergomi, 1921

Petrol Pump

Satam, 1931

Petrol Pump

Agip, Lighter Charger,1951

Petrol Pump

Tokheim, 1910

Petrol Pump

Gilbert and Barker, 1921

Petrol Pump

Bennet, USA, gas pump

Petrol Pump

Valvoline, 1950

Benaglia, 1975

Crae, 1955

Benaglia, 1970

Petrol Pump

Castellazzo, 1970

Bennett, 1985

Bergomi, 1935

 

Castrol, 1905

 

The beauty of American gas stations.

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