The pneumatic tube mail system in New York City | Hacker News Reader

The pneumatic tube mail system in New York City

untappedcities.com

185 pointsgeox104 comments

Watching my parents go through the drive in bank teller using pneumatic tubes to send items back and forth is such a fun cool memory I have from my childhood. In a funny way, it still feels way more “sci-fi future tech” than pressing a touch screen and wait 4 seconds for a change to happen… or not.

I did some contracting at a bank and an employee told me about a problem they had with their pneumatic tubes: A customer had taken the carrier with them when they drove off, so the teller put their spare into the tube and continued working. A short while later the customer realized they had absconded with the carrier and returned to the drive-thru and put it back into the tube. The next customer put their deposit in the carrier and sent it off - the teller received it and said "Sir, there's nothing in here." and held up the empty carrier to the window to show them. And sent it back. The customer took the carrier out, held it up to show his documents in it, and sent it back into the bank .. only to arrive empty again. They eventually figured out there were two carriers in the tube.

They still use those here. My local bank had candies, like tootsie rolls, that they'd send with withdrawals if parents let them know they had kids in the car. It was always such a treat to watch the cool pneumatic tube and then get a sugary treat to top it all off.

I think my local bank branch still has a drive through and (I assume) pneumatic tubes although I've never used it. But then I think I've used the ATM once in maybe the past three or four years.

> although I've never used it

I'm seriously considering going to the bank drive-through just to experience the pneumatic tubes again. I rarely ever get cash from the bank, I've only ever actually used an ATM a couple times in my entire life, but I feel a strong desire to relive this childhood experience.

Same experience. Getting flavored tootsie rolls out of a pneumatic bank tube is basically a core memory.

Ahhh yes, the flavored ones. The bank was the only place I ever ate the flavored ones, added an air of mystery to the experience.

In the midwest it's still the reality, because in the winter it gets darn cold.

Glad to hear the dream of the nineties is alive in the midwest:D

Oh its here. Metro Detroit. It gets cold. The thought of banks not having pneumatic tubes is so strange to me I'm chuckling here.

Seeing you reminisce about something that I see almost daily is a weird culture shock in that people in our same country experience life is somehow completely opposite ways.

It's like if someome told me there a secret Blockbuster still serving some quiet neighborhood in the country and for them its just... normal.

In fact there is, and it is:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_(Bend,_Oregon)

> Seeing you reminisce about something that I see almost daily is a weird culture shock

How about: i legitimately thought that the pneumatic tube system i saw in Futurama where Hermes saves the day was a made up thing (or otherwise not commercially used or deployed outside of some sort of lab setting) until i came across this submission?

I feel so silly right now.

Costco used to use them in the stores to send money to the main cashier, Home Depot might have had them too.

Or you can get food!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTHZLKFblKo

Yes, back when it was actually costco. Everything changed after the merger. I dont think i saw any pneumatics afterwards.

This is lovely hah. To be honest though the bank systems are extremely primitive with short runs so I never considered them on par or in the same class with the "industrial" pneumatic systems seen in heist movies or spanning entire buildings with complicated runs.

(Probably literally) tons of paper used to be shuffled around office buildings. My first (mechanical) engineering job basically everything was typed (by a secretary) in triplicate(?) with a copy sent off to central filing. If you started a new project, one of the first things you did was head to central filing to take a look for related paperwork.

We didn't have a pneumatic system but we did have internal mail delivered multiple times a day. There was even a trope back then of people starting their careers "in the mail room."

You see that in Monsters Inc and the sequel - they started off in the mail room. Most people think of the mail room as where incoming mail is sorted by the company, but the vast majority of it was often sorting internal mail, because mail from "outside" usually went to accounts receivable or accounts payable. But inter-office communication was huge, before it was all emailed away.

It's also a trope explored in The Hudsucker Proxy and Elf for a wider variety of movies to watch. Both I believe reference that the Empire State Building in New York has (had?) a pneumatic inter-floor (inter-office) mail system. I don't recall if it still operates and I don't know if either or both filmed in the actual ESB mail room or not.

(Also if you want a videogame that plays with the trope, Grim Fandango has a fascinating pneumatic tube mail room and it factors into some of the puzzles. I believe it is also indirectly referencing the Empire State Building.)

People did get a lot of trade magazines and other random stuff too. I didn't have work email at alll in my first job. And it was internal only at my next one until quite a few years later.

Conversely, if someone sent me physical mail at work today, I'd have to make special arrangements to even get it. If it were a package I assume/hope receiving would send me an email. Otherwise, I assume they just toss it given I haven't seen anything from them in years.

Someone else posted this recently and features both XKCD and supportive, positive thoughts. Enjoy!

https://xkcd.com/1053/

>> Oh its here. Metro Detroit. It gets cold.

Lol. Detroit doesnt get cold. My local bank closed its ATMs after hours due to homeless people sleeping in the vestibule. Strangely, with real winter comming soon they are going to re-open the vestibules to provide emergency shelter to all people maybe caught out in the cold. It hits -30 and -40 regularly around here. Drive thoughs are a norm because at those temps nobody wants to turn their car off. People regularly leave cars/trucks running while they shop in stores, if the parking lot doesnt have plugs for block heaters.

It’s a huge country out there! I love how different parts of it are, it makes domestic travel a real treat!

I have a RadioShack I can walk to.

Bank offices and cash is something I only see in old movies nowadays.

I assume a lot of it is for small businesses, but I'm actually always a bit surprised at the sheer volume of bank branches in prime downtown real estate.

I think the only time I've gone in a bank/brokerage branch in years is when I've needed something notarized or I've had some non-standard brokerage transaction I've needed to handle in person.

They are common in the Catskills of upstate New York too

and in the NYS Capital Region, just a wee bit north. Brand new bank renovations or branches all have pneumo-tubes in their outer lanes, ATM(s) along the wall to the building.

Though, I _do_ remember Woolworth's, banks, state offices and Lord knows what else back in the early '80s still using these like whoa.

There are still some pharmacies that offer medicine by tube but most have gone to a single drive thru.

Random trivia. Woolworth's still exists. But all the stores are called Foot Locker now.

And in the south where it’s hot. Loads of these in Houston and New Orleans for example.

Same in Fort Worth/Dallas

What is the alternative for banks that have more than one drive-in lane?

Much of California went to just multiple ATMs I think.

I used to love to go to the bank with my parents or a friend's parents and beg to get to put the tube in.

Also remember the local science museum had a pneumatic tube system to play with and we'd sit there with that for some time.

Lollipops were always sweeter delivered by pneumatic tube :)

Omg yes another great reason to go to the bank.

When I used to work at a bank, the staff at a branch that still used tubes at the drive through would complain about how hard they are to maintain. Apparently they were down to a single contractor in the whole county who knew how to fix them, and he was always threatening to retire soon.

Those bank-teller tubes are still in use in the Denver suburbs.

We still have them in the KC metro area, Fwiw.

And all over Florida.

Stanford Hospitals have a big pneumatic tube system. [1] Miles of tubes. Modern systems have automatic switches and tracking. Many large hospital complexes have such systems.

Here's what a router looks like.[2]

[1] https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2010/01/gone-with-the...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1ogS5EQpV0

> In its full glory, the pneumatic tubes covered a 27-mile route, connecting 23 post offices.

Berlin once had a 400 km tube mail system [0], which was in service from 1865 until 1976 (West Berlin) or 1986 (East Berlin). Before WWII, there were nearly 8 million items send via tube mail per year. Several hotels, large department stores or newspapers had their own private connection [1, 2, 3]

[0] https://www.berliner-unterwelten.de/fileadmin/_processed_/2/...

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohrpost_in_Berlin

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohrpost_in_Berlin

[3] https://www.berliner-unterwelten.de/verein/forschungsthema-u...

Very cool and it's a nice site too (I've only been to NYC once so it's good fodder for longing back). However this sentence made my alarm bells go off:

The first pneumatic tube mail system was installed in Philadelphia (sorry New York) in 1893. New York City’s came in 1897.

A quick check on Wikipedia [1] lists a bunch of earlier systems in Europe, but perhaps there's a silent "in the US" in the original article. That always seems odd to me though, when you're a website focusing on one of the world's top tourist attractions and writing in an international language. Oh well.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube#In_postal_servi...

While mail tubes are cool, I still think that the pneumatic garbage system on Roosevelt Island is even cooler. https://untappedcities.com/2020/04/09/inside-roosevelt-islan...

I worked in a factory where automotive scrap metal was whisked away in a similar vacuum system. When the system broke, it resulted in mounds of scrap aluminum piling in the basement and it was a rac to be cleaned by hand; I’d hate to see similar with garbage.

They are still extensively used in hospitals to transport specimens for testing and diagnostics.

https://www.swisslog-healthcare.com/en-gb/company/blog/how-a...

"Pneumatic tube" inmmediately triggers this scene in my mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuSDdJIcmHU

(Brazil, 1985, by Terry Gilliam)

Edit: oh, nologic01 had already mentioned it.

Was probably the inspiration for the movie “Brazil”, released in 1985 where the pneumatic tube system is part of the complicated and extensive "Central Services" administration.

Incidentally Brazil is for today's digital dystopia what Koyaanisqatsi (1982) is for environmental instability.

>Brazil is for today's digital dystopia

Can you elaborate there?

Spoiler alert: the "algorithm" malfunctions due to a real bug.

Also spoiler - there are no terrorists. It's the incompetence of Central Services that is causing things to explode.

Paris had one too, i was surprised when i learned it ran until 1984

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_pneumatic_post

Roosevelt Island NY has a pneumatic trash system https://untappedcities.com/2020/04/09/inside-roosevelt-islan...

Reminds me of the 1994 movie the shadow with Alec Baldwin. There is a scene where a cylinder is followed through the city. Unrealistically of course but I loved it. I always loved tube mail systems. Berlin, the city I grew up had one too. The only places I now where theses systems are still in use is hospitals.

Me too saw this first in The Shadow, thought that it was made up, until few years later came across the fact that they actually existed.

I don’t understand how such a thing didn’t have constant blockages and what kind of nightmare it would be to dig up and unblock one of these in the middle of the city.

Exactly! But I keep waiting for someone here to mention that, and not seeing it.

But my parents' Midwestern bank used to have these too in the 70s, always thought it was so cool.

Is it that regular to need to do this for regular pipes?

I imagine they used a drain snake to push through any blockages, and a redundant route until it was unblocked.

Regular pipes mostly transport liquids or gases. These are metal tubes with latches in metal tubes moving at high speed.

Coincidentally today I was daydreaming about such a system being built alongside the metro rail corridors of my city. Doesn't have to be pneumatic if built today, but such an automated system would certainly help move packages at an unimaginable speed within a congested city.

UK Supermarkets used to send cash from the tills to a back office using a system like this[1].

At some point a thief decided it would be a good idea to intercept some of this cash: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1554632/Thief-stole-...

These systems disappeared as we shifted away from cash.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamson_Engineering_Company_Ltd

the first scene of Grim Fandango, that's where pneumatic tube mail brings me back to

Nice username. One of the best all time games.

I'm convinced this is the next step in fast home delivery. Imagine if you could order something online and have it appear via tube in an hour. They wouldn't even have to go to every house, you could have centralized 'parcel locker' collection locations in each suburb.

Imagine a packet-switched physical network!

Imagine if we really did add a series of tubes to the internet!

Get on it, Amazon\Elon (or better yet... it should be a publicly owned utility).

Similar to the Alameda burrito tunnel that sends fresh Mission burritos to NYC: https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...

In Christchurch, New Zealand, we have a cafe that sends you your burger through a pneumatic tube system... Ton Scott did a video about it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTHZLKFblKo

You'd think they would have figured out a way to send pizza back the other way, given California's deficit.

They tried, but pizza is the wrong shape. In early tests, calzones from new york had some success but the market demand wasn’t there for the new-zone, so it never took off.

And some New York-style Chinese food. Bay food might be authentic but sometimes you just need some properly deep-fried sweet-and-sour pork.

Hey man you might be shadow banned.

I vouched for this comment, you might want to email the mods and see what’s up.

They are v.reasonable on the whole.

Looks like PBS tried to get in on the story, but frankly, they didn't do a very good job of it:

https://www.pbs.org/video/the-transcontinental-burrito-hyper...

No-one has thought to just open a burrito joint in NYC?

The food would be fresher, I hope.

This is incredible, thanks for sharing

This is not real, is it?

It's not real - but imagine if it were!

There's also a part of NYC with pneumatic garbage collection

https://www.npr.org/2017/07/26/539304811/how-new-york-s-roos...

Pneumatic tube systems feel so steampunk-ish. I loved it as a kid when the banks still did that. I think one bank still does it this way in my hometown (in 2023!).

Here is a map of the mail-subway I happen to have on file

https://imgur.com/PJCnINA

I recently learned that Hamburg had a big tube system ("Großrohrpost"). The tube diameter was 45cm and the length of the wagons was 1,60m.

Some information in the German Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohrpost_in_Hamburg#Gro%C3%9Fr...

Recent article (paywalled) on German news site: https://www.zeit.de/2023/37/grossrohrpost-hamburg-kommunikat...

I've often thought that these would be practical within a set of office buildings, and in fact, the speed would probably rival an email system's. And way funner.

SOME of the time. It clearly wouldn't replace email.

All the tubes would be out in the open, so clearing a blockage would be no problem.

I worked at a multi-storey department store that used to use a system like this to send cash to the cash office.

Someone working there figured out that the tube system passed above the false roof in the men’s staff bathroom and intercepted some of these capsules while they were in transit.

Who else first saw a pneumatic tube in Lost the show?

https://lostpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Capsule_dump

Related ( French but automatic subtitles are available ), the penumatic tube system in Paris : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8KfzAMnnlo

Wait till you hear abt pneumatic trash systems in estonia/sweeden

That poor cat

Seriously. One would have to be a bit of a psycho to put an animal through that without an extremely good reason.

Depending on the distance I would expect the cat to have succumbed during the trip. If the inside of the canister was not open to the outside air it probably wouldn't have enough oxygen and have suffocated during the trip. If it was open, would the amount of pressure in the tubes be fatal to a cat?

If the cat did survive, I wouldn't want to be the attendant who opened the canister.

The longest trip quoted is 4 minutes. I don't think a cat is going to suffocate in a small tube in 4 minutes, even a very unhappy one.

my guess is that they probably sent a cat because it didn’t fit a baby.

There was also a pneumatic shuttle subway in Manhattan that served as POC for a subway system.

Beach got Tammany Hall to approve construction of that tunnel by telling them it was... a pneumatic mail system!

Everything we're building today is the next generation's pneumatic tubes

High bandwidth, low latency of the time.

> The system, which was located 4 to 6 feet below the city streets, was created and owned by private companies, to which the city paid rent and labor.

When did we collectively lose the idea that such a model is even possible?

I don’t understand it. What did the city rent? What was the profit sharing like? Did the private companies keep all the profits and the city footed the bill for maintenance, support and upkeep?

Public private partnership. The city doesn't have the funds up front, so it contracts the work out but part of the payment is a monopoly on running the service for some number of years. This is how the subway was built using the dual contracts (IRT and BMT). Basically the city paid contractors to build the subway, and paid for it in part by letting them run the subway and collect fares.

I'm about as interested in the creation. Did people just go down and install them? Was this an "ask forgiveness, not permission" scenario? If not, how did they get the permission of everyone above? Or how deep do land rights even go?

I ask this partially too because most of the highways in my state were originally privately funded and built, and only later funded by government fees.

I just wonder what happened to the "let's just go do it" mentality of rallying people to cooperate and getting things done. Almost seems like it would be hard to do worse than the current bureaucratic nightmares.

This is turn of the century New York. Someone was getting paid from government accounts. ;-)

>> “The high operating costs of the pneumatic system ultimately proved its downfall. By 1918, the federal government considered the annual rental payments ($17,000 per mile per annum) made by the post office to be ‘exorbitant’ and endorsed a new alternative with greater capacity–the automobile–as the delivery method of choice.”

More to the point, who owns them now and can we pull fibre through them?

Verizon, actually. Not the mail tubes specifically, but they own Empire City Subway, a 130 year old company rents out sub-street conduit for telecom. Their tubes are visible when streets are dug up for construction.

https://www.empirecitysubway.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_City_Subway

Looks like their lowest rate (<=2.5" conduit) is $3,660/mile/yr, not including installation, permitting, and city franchising fees. Still interested?

To be able to charge business customers $500-$1500+/month for 10-gig and run an IPX? Sounds cheap!

Maybe just fill a tube container with nvme and have a few USB connected channels on the end, make a little bot to plug it into compute for each step of a processing pipeline. If you move 10T in 30s that’s like 300G/s?

Only fragments exist; they don't form complete lines anymore.

(Besides, these are 100+ year old iron tubes; there are much better things to run fiber through. NYC does not have a shortage of buried, half-forgotten infrastructure.)

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