Vintage Gas Pumps and more in the Art Astor Collection
Originally published in the May-June 2009 (# 288) issue of Lincoln & Continental Comments magazine.
One of the best places to see old gas pumps and related artifacts and old radios and television sets in Southern California is the Art Astor Collection in Anaheim, which was visited at the LCOC 2008 Western National Meet. The collection is primarily automobiles, a couple hundred less since Astor’s auction last June, but it is also much more than automobiles. Art Astor is a pioneer broadcaster in California and his collections of telephones, microphones, vintage radios and early television sets is fascinating. Let’s begin with his early service station memorabilia.
It’s hard to believe there was a time when service stations actually performed service, but up until about 1960 they actually did. They wiped your windshield, checked your water and oil, checked the air in your tires, and gave you road maps and cheerful directions, all for free. In those days petroleum was cheap and the business was highly competitive.
Service stations were brightly decorated, nobody pumped his own gas, and there were cheerful attendants who actually made you feel welcome. The biggest welcome signs of all were the multi colored visible pumps with their many colors of gasoline. Petroleum companies would dye their fuels – Sunoco blue, Standard red, Gulf orange, Sinclair green, Royal purple, etc.
While we only saw one “visible” pump at the Art Astor collection, this design is where gas pump collecting started. Visible gas pumps began to appear shortly after World War I. The attendant would hand pump the gasoline up into the glass cylinder where the motorist could see just how pure the gas was and how many gallons he was getting. At first cylinder size was limited to five gallons. Eventually 10-gallon cylinders were legalized. In 1920, the nozzle shutoff was introduced so the attendant no longer had to worry about overflow. In 1923, the Wayne Pump Company introduced a visible electric motor driven pump. Now the attendant could use his arms to serve the customer instead of turn the crank or pump the handle. Purer gasoline was taken more for granted, so by the thirties the monster visible pumps were no longer quite the attractions of earlier years.
ABOVE: 1958 Chevrolet Impala Convertible with Twenties Visible Style Pump
ABOVE: Cars are still the mainstay of the collection. Above is a 1951 Mercury Monterey Coupe.
ABOVE: A 1931 Model A Ford Victoria
The pumps in the Astor collection are primarily from the 1930-1960 era. The year 1930 saw the introduction of metered pumps. At last the motorist had something new to watch besides the rise and fall of the level of gasoline in the glass cylinder. Now he could watch the hands of a clock, the hour hand ticking off the gallons and the minute hand the fractions of gallons. Still the attendant had to sell the customer gas in gallons, then compute the price from a card plainly displayed on the pump. Finally, in 1933, the Wayne Company introduced its “Head for Figures”, an intricate clockwork of gears which computed not only gallons but the cost of each 1/10th of a gallon. At last gas could be sold by the dollar’s worth rather than by the gallon. Pumps got smaller and less ornate, but the globes remained for years. The Art Astor collection has pumps of every description from this era.
Hand and hand with pumps go the old time gas pump globes. They were always milk glass. Gilbert and Barker introduced the first globes in 1912 on top of the newest five-gallon hand pumps. The electric globe was the only thing electric on the pump. The purpose of the globes was to serve as a beacon for the traveler after dark and to aid the attendant in dispensing gasoline at night. The beacon also meant that the station was open at night.
The first globes were round and quite small. They looked like the old time globes at each end of the police department’s sergeant’s desk down at city hall. Later, they were circular and convex on each side. The earliest ones merely carried the words “Gasolene” or ’ ’Filtered Gasolene”. The “e” changed to “i” after World War I. In the twenties the globes carried the brand name and symbol.
In the twenties globe makers got the idea of encasing two convex glass plates in a steel frame. By the fifties the glass plates were replaced with plastic. Eventually, the expensive globes were replaced simply with lights atop the more modem pumps.
One of the most sought after globes today is Standard of Indiana’s Red, Blue, and White Crown formed in the shape of a regal crown. But it was far from the rarest. Over the years there were some 900 different brands of gasoline and every one had its own globe.
Before gas prices went through the ceiling and customers became nobodies, globes stood for service. Some of us are old enough to remember the Milton Berle television show in the early days with uniformed attendants singing, “We are the men of Texaco, we work from Maine to Mexico…under the smiling Texaco service star.” It was a song and dance routine to equal anything done by Busby Berkeley. The uniforms were snappy, the bow ties were genuine leather, and those Milton Berle Texaco commercials actually made viewers look forward to “and now a few words from our sponsor.”
Speaking of the sponsor, Art Astor’s old radios and television sets will take you back to the days when Jack Benny’s quartet sang the Lucky Strike Song and Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy poured you a cup of Chase and Sanborn Coffee on Sunday night radio. By 1949, radio was being replaced by those little twelve-and-a-half-inch black and white television screens carrying the earliest television shows like Kukla, Fran and Ollie and Sid Ceasar and Imogene Coca’s Show of Shows. Vaudeville had come off the stage and into everybody’s living room. And boy does Art Astor have all the old radios and television sets to bring back the memories for those of us old enough to remember anything before color television, cable, and video tape.
Broadcast television made its American debut at the New York World’s Fair in April, 1939. A handful of receivers were available by the end of the month from RCA. It was possible for RCA to provide the first telecasts as they also owned NBC. Television shows aired only three or four evenings a week. There were only a few hundred sets scattered throughout the New York City area. Boxing and wrestling were early attractions. Baseball and football were too difficult for the early cameras and small screens to follow. A few news programs and studio dramas were attempted but nothing on a regular basis.
While several manufacturers announced sets only RCA sets sold in any quantity. By the end of 1939 only about 2,000 sets had been sold by all manufacturers. RCA offered five models. There were two with five-inch screens, two consoles, and a table model. The table model was sight only and required a radio for sound. The two consoles offered a nine-inch and a 12-inch screen. The 12-inch screen was mounted vertically and aimed at the ceiling. The image was reflected off a mirror mounted in the lid of the set and directed at the viewer. Both consoles featured built-in radios. The 12-inch model was by far the most popular. Priced at $450 only about 300 were sold. It is estimated that fewer than a dozen survive today. It was from these simple beginnings that television grew.
Of course, the big attraction of the Art Astor Collection remains the automobiles but the number of cars is now down from about 300 to 80, and there are very few classics and no Lincolns left. Still, it is a wonderful place to visit.
ABOVE: 1954 Philco Predicta Television Set
ABOVE: Thirties Console Radio
ABOVE: Collection of old time radio microphones.
ABOVE: Early telephones in the Art Astor Collection.
ABOVE: Early small screen table model television sets.
ABOVE: 1939 RCA Nine-Inch Console Television Set with radio.
