1929 – 17,000 gasoline pumps

History

The Italy of 1929, five years after the first roadside facilities had appeared, counted more than two hundred thousand motor vehicles.

At their service were 16,750 gasoline pumps: 6,500 of Siap (Standard gas), 6,000 of Nafta (Shell gas), and 4,000 of Agip (Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli, established in 1926), the firm which had brought Snom and the Victoria trademark into the network.

The remaining 250 were of the Benzina-Petroleum group, founded in 1924, which closed after a short while, ceding everything to Nafta and Siap.

Of these pumps, those of Siap were generally the self-measuring twenty-liter type: imposing obelisks able to communicate a certain robustness, but without much claim to esthetic merit.

The five-liter measuring pumps used by hotels and small retailers (also of the Siap network) had a more pleasing aspect, thanks to a rounded housing surmounted by two spires: from one came the hose, and on the other rested the lighted globe.

As for the rest, with rare exceptions (Nafta also used some measuring pumps), the Italian gas pump fleet was of the five-liter double-vessel, or pentalitri abbinati type, produced in large part by Bergomi.