ITALY AND EUROPE 1948, Scooters and mixing pumps - At the end of 1948, the great oil companies reclaimed the freedom of action lost to them during the war and began to reconstruct their networks in Italy. It was the era of the volumetric pump, and the contometric display gauge became commonplace; the old visible pumps, offered by now only to the private businesses and garages, remained in production for a while longer. The Fifties saw the first authentic motorization of the masses in the form of many economical automobiles but above all of scooters: in the filling stations it became obligatory to have mixing pumps, through which the technology of the visible pump survived for a long while. Following a tendency by now common to all the national markets, the new pumps became ever more compact and rounded; alongside them, in less conspicuous positions, the old five-liter types and self-measuring pumps held on. Then everything suddenly accelerated: the idea of the new at any cost and a great attention to corporate image were the foundations of the aggressive philosophy of the post-war boom. With the arrival of the Sixties no one wanted the old relics in their service station any more, and in the arc of a few years almost all the pre-war equipment was replaced by the new automated pumps. 20/20