London's forgotten pneumatic messaging system

New York also used pneumatic tubes for the postal service, but they were replaced with mail-trucks. My understanding is that the empty tubes themselves have been repurposed to carry fiber-optics cables for trading firms and the like.

Heck, the first New York City subway (the Beach Pneumatic Railway) (a) was pneumatic (b) was an abuse of a permit to build a pneumatic tube under Broadway.

There were also open-air pneumatic railways ("atmospheric railways") in a few places, including in the UK -- they used a piston in a small tube to drive the car from underneath, sort of like a cable car ... but they didn't have good rubber, had to rely on leather seals that were plagued with inflexibility and rat problems. Then they invented the electrical multiple-unit train... bo-ring. :b

I remember the Costco on in Santa Clara near the Alameda had pneumatic tubes back in the 80's and 90's when I was growing up. Looking back I think they were used for exchanging cash between registers, and submitting requests for expensive items held in the back room. But as a kid, those tubes were a bit of magic, even when I knew exactly how they worked. I used to think how great it would be to have one big enough for people to ride in -- you could go to work in near record time on a roller-coaster ride!

I think technology of that era had a certain appeal because it operated at human-scale limits. We could see the inner workings and comprehend the ingenuity involved. Sadly as technology has advanced we no longer have that basic, primal connection to the operation of the state of the art :( I wonder if kids are able to get as excited about the inner workings of a fiber optic cable as I was staring at those pneumatic tubes as a child...

I am always amazed at how everything seems to be a reiteration of something before. I thought that telephones were the first long distance communication method. And then I saw a documentary about semaphore towers, and realized that long distance communication has been going on far longer than I realized.

I used one of these in my first job (pdp11 sysadmin). I'd stick the report in a canister, place it in the tube and it would whoosh away across the factory. They are still used today by Tesco to take cash from the tills up to accounts.

As a boy in the 60's and 70's it was still pretty common to see these systems in department stores for handling receipts. I always found them fascinating. The cashier would open the slide and you'd hear the suction, then a solid thunk as the container was sucked into the line. A few minutes later and you'd actually hear the returning container whoosh down the line before it thudded into the padded basket. The development of these systems strikes me as being similar to the development of canals, in that they solved a significant physical problem for a short time until much better technology (railroads, telephones) emerged. Interesting article and thanks for posting it.

Pneumatic tubes are still regularly used in large hospitals where rapid delivery of medical samples is required. Multiple companies provide them. http://www.aerocomusa.com/

Frankly, it's a bit scary knowing what hazardous biologicals goe into the carriers... and how difficult it would be to clean if something went wrong.

I sent a letter to myself (from my home to the office) using the Paris pleumatique when I realized that it would probably not survive for long. It stuck around for another couple of years after that, but I was glad I did it. It was of course an anachronistic relic by the 1980s but using it made me feel like a time traveler.

For years I've dreamed about if New York had a pneumatic tube system working. Forget about transmitting data/documents -- use it to replace small deliveries!

For Chinese takeout or some tacos, for a book delivered from Barnes & Noble, for some lemons from the supermarket when you realize you've run out, for a bottle of shampoo from the corner pharmacy. Heck, try on different sizes of shirts and sneakers and jeans from different stores, and pack them back in the tube when they don't fit. Use it for mail too. Individual tubes that run straight into each apartment.

The convenience would be incredible. And now that we have software to intelligently and automatically route all the canisters, I often wonder why you never see it proposed more often.

For an interesting read on how telegraph and pneumatic technologies evolved : search for the book "The victorian internet".

Does anybody have a mirror? The page doesn't load for me.

Is this were we make Ted Stevens jokes?