Yep, that was the equipment used in the 30's and 40's. By the 50's they 
were all gone except for a few isolated instances. Today, they are 
museum pieces. The neat thing of those devices, was, you could see the 
fuel color and the quantity you were getting. Today we rely on the 
electronics and we all know how good and how that can be hacked. In 
Ohio, most states are similar, the county auditor has people that go 
around with calibrated containers, and check the accuracy of the meters. 
The dispenser if good, gets a dated seal sticker that is good for a 
year. Some states check the quality of the fuel for purity and octane 
rating, Ohio does not!

Last week, I picked up 40 gallons of off road (no highway tax) diesel 
fuel for our tractor at the local distributor that services farmers and 
businesses. I pumped from a 3000 gallon above the ground tank with a 
pump/meter unit mounted on top. This was the exception to the 
submersible tank setup. The nozzle tube was at least 1" diameter, no way 
could you get it into a car fill point. :)

Olin Lathrop wrote:
> Carl Denk wrote:
>   
>> The pumps are all submersible, and have a check valve after the pump
>> turbines (very close, the entire pump including motor, turbine and check
>> valve, probably less than 2 feet long). The entire system is liquid(and
>> for all practical purposes air too) tight, When the pump is turned on
>> for the first time (new, after maintenance or running the tank dry)
>> after being immersed in fuel, it will  self prime very quickly and the
>> air will get compressed in the piping, dispenser, and hose to the
>> nozzle. Opening the nozzle valve will allow the air to be expelled from
>> the system. Once this is done (should be done by the system operator,
>> and not customer) there should not be any air in the system, though it
>> would be possible to drain the liquid in the hose by turning off the
>> pump (read as including a manifold valve if multi dispenser system) and
>> opening the nozzle valve with the nozzle lower than it's attachment to
>> the dispenser. Most meters I have seen only measure liquid, and not air,
>> but this may not be always true.
>>     
>
> This is generally how all pumps work I've seen in recent decades, but things
> were not always so.  Back when I was in grade school we were driving thru
> northern Arizona and New Mexico, and happened to need gas in the Hopi indian
> reservation.  We had ask around a bit for where there was a gas station, but
> eventually we were directed to a town on the top of a hill a few miles from
> the main road.  The gas pump had a big upside down jar on top, looking
> sortof like one of those replacable water jugs of office water coolers.
> Except this jar was a bit bigger, glass, and on top of the pump at eye
> level.  The gas station attendent asked how much gas we wanted, then worked
> a mechanical pump by hand that caused the big glass jar to fill up.  It was
> marked off in gallons.  Once he got to the gallons we requested, he stopped
> pumping and the car was filled by gravity from the big jar.  Pretty cool.  I
> vaguely remember gas cost in the low 30 cents per gallon range.
>
> The cheapest gas I remember was in the middle of noplace Nevada (maybe Utah
> or Arizona).  It was at a crossroads of two paved roads with a gas station
> on 3 of the 4 corners with pretty much nothing else around for 10s of miles.
> The gas price was 18 cents/gallon, which was a great deal even then.
>
>
> ********************************************************************
> Embed Inc, Littleton Massachusetts, http://www.embedinc.com/products
> (978) 742-9014.  Gold level PIC consultants since 2000.
>   
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