People started to think only hand pumps dispensed proper beer. Not only is that not true, handpumps can and do also dispense bright beer or beer kept under a low pressure CO2 'blanket'. I suspect they might have been unpopular with landlords as they also dispensed a full pint into an oversized glass, whereas with handpumps nearly all pubs use brim measure glasses and swindle the customer out of up to 10% of his beer.
The dispenser I was thinking of in the Grindstone was a piston in a cylinder (called a to-and-fro I think) rather than the cube with the 'rubber' diaphragm. Now I picture it, it was actually a one pint one that did a pint in one stroke, not the double ended one with 2 simultaneous half pints or a half pint one that had to be operated twice for a pint. Never saw one of those anywhere else. And the beer was definitely proper in ~1972.
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