The Pneumatic Tube Day

 

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‘Pneumatic tubes are systems that propel cylindrical containers through a network of tubes by compressed air or by partial vacuum. They are used for transporting solid objects, as opposed to conventional pipelines, which transport fluids. Pneumatic tube networks gained acceptance in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for offices that needed to transport small, urgent packages (such as mail or money) over relatively short distances (within a building, or, at most within a city). Some installations grew to great complexity, but were mostly superseded.

‘Pneumatic capsule transportation was invented by William Murdoch. It was considered little more than a novelty until the invention of the capsule in 1836. The Victorians were the first to use capsule pipelines to transmit telegraph messages, or telegrams, to nearby buildings from telegraph stations. While they are commonly used for small parcels and documents – including as cash carriers at banks or supermarkets – they were originally proposed in the early 19th century for transport of heavy freight. It was once envisaged that networks of these massive tubes might be used to transport people.

‘The failure of pneumatic tubes to live up to their potential as envisaged in previous centuries has placed them in the company of flying cars and dirigibles as ripe for ironic retro-futurism. The 1960s cartoon series The Jetsons featured pneumatic tubes that people could step into and be sucked up and swiftly spat out at their destination. In the animated television series Futurama, set in the 31st century, large pneumatic tubes are used in cities for transporting people, whilst smaller ones are used to transport mail. The tubes in Futurama are also used to depict the endless confusion of bureaucracy: an immense network of pneumatic tubes connects all offices in New New York City to the “Central Bureaucracy”, with all the capsules being deposited directly into a huge pile in the main filing room, with no sorting or organization.’ — collaged

 

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We shot a camera through a pneumatic tube system, just to see what was inside.

 

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‘The world of tomorrow we are creating for ourselves and our children will be one of traffic congestion, pollution, and an ever-dimmishing natural world being covered in asphalt. We need to change our transportation policies — we all know this — but the question is: in what way? Pneumatic tubes transporting people via individual pods, operating on Internet based protocols is, as has been shown, the best solution. The Inteli-Tube system will give people their freedom and space; reduce pollution, both chemical and noise; end costly, stressful, and unproductive traffic jams; increase safety; decrease dependence on foreign oil; and, most importantly, usher in the future that technology has been promising us.’ — collaged

 

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‘Petit Bleu is referred to on page 437 of Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way (Remembrance of Things Past) as a pneumatic tube used to carry express messages in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century. Proust used these frequently for his most urgent notes to friends and acquaintances. In the novel, when the young Narrator meets “the lady in pink,” who, he later learns, is Odette de Crécy, she is captivated by his gallantry and suggests that he send her a ‘bleu’ in order to make a date to come for tea.’ — collaged

 

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‘George Medhurst was born in Shoreham, Kent, England, in 1759. He manufactured scales from premises in Denmark Street in London, however, also invented uses for compressed air in his spare time. In 1810 Medhurst published a pamphlet, in which he proposed the use air for conveying letters and goods. He stated that “the pressure required will nearly agree with the square of the velocity”, and hence, he believed, speeds of 100 or even 1000 miles per hour (mph) could be achieved. In 1812 Medhurst mused on the possibility that such a system might be used for the transport of passengers, but was concerned that passengers might not take kindly to be transported within tubes. He sought to develop a means by which passengers could be moved outside of the tube, but by some form of pneumatic propulsion.

‘John Vallance, of Brighton, England, took out a patent based on ideas contained within Medhurst’s 1812 pamphlet. The extent to which Vallance was aware of Medhurst’s work is unclear. Vallance built a prototype at his home in Brighton. The system had a diameter of 8 feet, and was 150 feet long, with a pair of rails laid inside the tube upon which a capsule ran. The capsule, with 20 passengers was propelled through the tube at a speed of 2 mph. Unfortunately retardation of the capsule was achieved by opening the door to the passenger compartment, which made for an unpleasant experience for passengers, and the system soon ridiculed as ‘Vallance’s Suffocation Scheme’.’ — collaged

 

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‘Until it closed in early 2011, a McDonald’s in Edina, Minnesota claimed to be the “World’s Only Pneumatic Air Drive-Thru”. The Drive Thru was only connected to the restaurant by a Pneumatic air chamber (like a bigger version of a bank teller tube). So if you ordered from the Drive-Thru, they sent your food out through the Pneumatic air system to the small booth that you pulled up to.’ — collaged

 

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‘Mercury Rev and Midlake member Jesse Chandler’s debut album as Pneumatic Tubes harnesses nostalgia so vividly, produced in an attic amongst home movies and family relics for a few decades.’ — boomkat

 

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‘In a bank’s daily operations, the transfer of documents and other items in various volumes and sizes is a common practice. Most of these documents are confidential in nature which is why the means of transporting them must be both efficient and safe. Doing drive thru transactions is no exception, which is why Drive Thru Tubes in banking are very much in demand. There are several types of Bank Drive Thru Tubes that banks can use.

‘Side-opening bank drive thru tubes: This type allows users to load or unload items from the sides of the tubes. The size of Side-opening bank drive thru tubes used will depend on the requirements of the bank. End-opening bank drive thru tubes: With end-opening bank drive thru tubes, the openings are located at either ends of the tubes. Using this type would depend on the preference and needs of the bank’s personnel.

‘Box bank drive thru tubes: This is the least common type used in a Banking Drive Thru Tube System. It is in box form and comes in various sizes and can be fitted according to the carriers to be used. The reason why it is the least used compared to the previous two types is that most users see the box type as outdated.

‘Banks can design the system that they wish to install according to their specifications to perfectly match their needs. Manufacturers of these systems also provide their banking customers the option to alter or expand them later on if the need arises. Use our Interactive Selection Guide to help you find the model numbers you need.’ — collaged

 

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The Shadow (1994) – Pneumatic Mail Tube System Scene

 

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‘The Tubes Pneumatique, or the Pneumatic Mail Service, of Paris dated as far back as 1867. The first tubes connected the Bourse and the Grand Hotel beginning what would become an enormous system several hundred miles in tubes. Like the system used in America, the tube is filled with compressed air in a partial vacuum. Instead of using air pumps or any engines, the Parisian system worked using power from the city’s reservoir. Originally there were three large connected iron plated vessels that could hold 1,200 gallons each. The first vessel was filled with water, which was pushed into the other two vessels, which were filled with air. The air becomes compressed and once a valve was opened the air escaped rushing with force into the tubes.

‘Until 1898 when private cards and envelopes were admitted, the use of the official postal stationery was obligatory for pneumatic mail. The decree which opened the tubes to the public was signed on 25 January 1879 by MacMahon in the last days of his presidency and came into effect on 1 May 1879. It prescribed two franked forms: one, open, at 50 centimes, and one, closed, at 75 centimes, in modern parlance respectively a card and a letter-card although the latter was on thin paper. The height of pneumatic post in Paris was in the 1930’s where a letter, which the French called a “pneu” could get anywhere in the city in less than two hours. 240 miles of tubing created the net like system that laid just underneath Paris, carrying letter at an average speed of 40 m.p.h. After World War II the system was expanded and modernized but eventually began to decline and the Parisian pneumatic postal system ended in 1984.’ — collaged

The underground pneumatic post of Paris from Truffaut’s 1969 film Baiser Voles aka. Stolen Kisses.

 

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Pneumatic Diversity Vent

 

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‘Jeff Highsmith realized that with the vast increase in world population over the past few centuries, the Tooth Fairy must be increasingly pressed for time. So he built a pneumatic tube system that delivers his son’s teeth from their home to the Tooth Fairy’s house.’ — collaged

 

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‘Before the U.S. Postal Service started carrying packages on foot or by car, mail made its way around New York City through an intricate system of pneumatic tubes, built four to six feet below the surface.

‘Traveling at 35 miles per hour, mail wasn’t the only thing sent through these tubes—someone decided a black cat should take a ride. According to a passage from the autobiography of one mail worker, Howard Wallace Connell, the cat lived, but appeared disconcerted:

‘“How it could live after being shot at terrific speed from Station P in the Produce Exchange Building, making several turns before reaching Broadway and Park Row, I cannot conceive, but it did. It seemed to be dazed for a minute or two but started to run and was quickly secured and placed in a basket that had been provided for that purpose. A suit of clothes was the third arrival and then came letters, papers, and other ordinary mail matter.”‘ — Vox

 

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‘Chicago-based inventor Joseph Stoetzel proposed a system of pneumatic tubes that were larger than the nine miles of existing pneumatic tubes that the city had underground for mail.

‘He wanted to transport both freight and passengers through the network of snaking tubes.

‘To prove how effective and safe it was, he put his own son, Robert, inside one of the canisters.

‘The boy had one word for reporters afterward: “Whew!”’ — Popular Mechanics

 

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“Sub-Rosa Subway,” a song written by the band Klaatu, describes Alfred Ely Beach’s efforts to create the Beach Pneumatic Transit, which came before the New York City subway. In 1977, the song reached its personal height at No. 62 on the Billboard Hot 100.’ — Popular Mechanics

Here are some lyrics:

“All aboard sub-rosa subway

Had you wondered who’s been digging under Broadway?

It’s Alfred!

It’s Alfred!

It’s Alfred…”

 

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‘In Lost, the Pearl station had a pneumatic tube system. In the Pearl Orientation video, Mark Wickmund (a.k.a. Pierre Chang) instructed that the pneumatic tube was to be used to transport data collection notebooks back to “us”. Prior to watching the video, Locke put his drawing of the blast door map in the tube without a capsule. It was sucked up into the tube, showing that it was still working. (“?”) The tube from the Pearl led to the capsule dump, a dumping ground for capsules. The dump was the destination of all the capsules or items sent through the pneumatic tube located in the Pearl, including Locke’s copy of the blast door map. The capsules contained logbooks written by the inhabitants of the Pearl. It appeared that the capsules had not been recently collected or studied (or may never have been collected). This may be because no one was left to collect them following the Purge (“The Man Behind the Curtain”) or because the real purpose of the Pearl was not to keep these logbooks. The goal of the experiment and the reasons for its long duration (evidenced by the number of capsules at the dump) have not been explained. (“Live Together, Die Alone, Part 1”) Because the capsules appeared in piles, it could be concluded that there may have been more stations that had similar pneumatic tubes leading to the same place, but the exits no longer remained. It could also be assumed that this was the only way the producers could get that many capsules to stay in one place and not roll down the hill.’ — collaged

 

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Very impressed by Kevin Clague’s pneumatic creations, I wanted to build some nice pneumatic sequencer gizmo. Unfortunately my pneumatic collection is more restricted than Kevin’s, but with a little thinking I came up with this pneumatic actuated wheel that uses just 6 pistons and 6 switches (many Kevin’s designs use LOTS of pneumatic switches…). The principle is simple: A piston is pressurized and contract. This contraction causes an arm to pull out the wheel. This arm pushes on ground and make the wheel tilt and advance. It also flips the pneumatic switch that controls the contraction of the next piston and expansion of the previous one. Construction details.

 

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‘A vactrain (or vacuum tube train) is a proposed, as-yet-unbuilt design for future high-speed railroad transportation. It is a maglev line run through evacuated (air-less) or partly evacuated tubes or tunnels. The lack of air resistance could permit vactrains to use little power and to move at extremely high speeds, up to 4000–5000 mph (6400–8000 km/h, 2 km/s), or 5–6 times the speed of sound (Mach 1) at standard conditions. Though the technology is currently being investigated for development of regional networks, advocates have suggested establishing vactrains for transcontinental routes to form a global network.

‘Vactrain tunnels could permit very rapid intercontinental travel. Vactrains could use gravity to assist their acceleration. If such trains went as fast as predicted, the trip between Beijing and New York would take less than 2 hours, supplanting aircraft as the world’s fastest mode of public transportation. Travel through evacuated tubes allows supersonic speed without the penalty of sonic boom found with supersonic aircraft. The trains could operate faster than Mach 1 without noise. Researchers at Southwest Jiaotong University in China are developing (in 2010) a vactrain to reach speeds of 1,000 km/h (620 mph). They say the technology can be put into operation in 10 years.’ — collaged

 

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‘Pneumatic Post is a place to file notes about the life of pneumatic tube systems (particularly in hospitals) alongside other postal, medical and museum related discoveries. Pneumatic tube systems are systems of pipes used to transport solid objects by vacuum. Once resplendent in European and American cities, they are now mostly used in hospitals, banks, pharmacies and other networked institutions. I would love to hear your comments, on the blog or by email: a.harris@ maastrichtuniversity.nl’. — collaged

 

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2011: Whooshh Innovations invents the Fish Cannon

 

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‘Japan’s Love hotels operate based on a principle of total anonymity. During your stay, the odds are you will never see anyone face-to-face. Not a concierge, not a maid, nobody. If you need customer service you talk to somebody on the phone. You pay upon departure using a pneumatic tube (think bank drive-throughs), that shuttles between your room and an office in another part of the hotel.’ — Ramen Chemistry

 

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‘Aslak Borgersrud of Oslo, Norway recently sent a GoPro camera through a pneumatic tube system at Norwegian Parliament, capturing first-person video of what a trip through the pipes would look like.’ — Laughing Squid

 

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Grim Fandango
by Luisfe

 

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How to calculate force inside of a cylinder inside a pneumatic tube system? How to calculate the velocity of a cylinder in a pneumatic tube system can we use the force is equal to power/velocity formula to find velocity?

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Cool. I suppose huge success could have made Old Skull’s story even sadder, but at least Aerosmith would have been muffled. Although I do have a guilty pleasure thing for ‘Janie’s Got a Gun’. Ha ha, I used to be addicted to ‘Survivor’ in its early years. I have no excuse for that. The last time I was in LA my roommate there watched the latest episode, and it is still exactly the same as it was decades ago, which is … charming? Love replacing every escalator and elevator with a pneumatic tube and with apologies about what that does to everyone’s hair, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, B. Boy, I would be really surprised if ‘Twin Peaks’ goes another round, but … Lynch doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything else, so … ** T. J., Me neither. It was all news to me. Renaissance artist, who’d have thunk? I’m happy Shit+ Shine found a berth in your head. Your reading activities are warmly applauded by me, especially ‘Project for a Revolution …’. Nice film viewing too. And that you’re managing to write and record. Anything you’re making especially exciting you? Thanks about the film. Yeah, can’t wait. ** Tosh Berman, Hey. Oh, I did a post ages ago about actors and celebrities who are also painters. I’m going to find and restore that. And maybe do a part 2. Huh. Thanks, Tosh! ** Misanthrope, Oh, right, I remember about the one day a week thing now. That’s better. It’s not just the guv’ment, but yeah. Tops dogs are the worst. There’s a football team called Eagles? I know nothing. I’ll try to remember to call you Icarus from here on out. ** David Ehrenstein, I’m probably going to go to bed at 10:30 pm like I usually do unless it’s not that cold outside in which case I might walk down to some viewing spot and watch the fireworks erupt over the Eiffel Tower. And you? ** CAUTIVOS, Thanks! Oh, that was Piper Laurie (who was also in ‘Twin Peaks’) who played the mother in ‘Carrie’. I actually did a post about her too a while ago, strangely. I don’t know what the arrival of the Three Wise Men is, so maybe we don’t celebrate that here? Curious holiday, that. Like Boxing Day, which we also don’t celebrate here. Are you doing New Year’s Eve in any festive fashion? ** Nick., Hey, N! The guy who played Bob in ‘Twin Peaks’ ran a used furniture store just down the street from where I live(d) in LA. You could go in and say hi to him and stuff. He was a very a very odd, extravagant queen in real life. Organic clothes are a hassle, but you just get used to being very unfashionable after a while. Thank you for reading my books. That’s cool. ‘Book of Lies’! One of my very, very favorite books in the entire world! Isn’t it so fucking amazing? Yeah, great reading list there. Thank you for the music links. I’ll listen today. I don’t know that Bareback project at all. Huh. Listening, me? A bunch of sort of random noise music that I’ll have to hunt to find the names of. Guided by Voices are my favorite band, so I always listen to them. I’ve been really wanting to hear Ethel Cain, so I’ll use your directive as my beginning. I’m in a bit of a reading lull at the moment because the film project is kind of eating my brain., but, when I do, uh, I’m reading the Kathy Acker biography mostly. Cartoon? Wow, I never watch cartoons, I don’t think? Weird. Do animes count? If so, maybe ‘Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space’. If you could travel to anywhere in the world (all expenses paid), where would you go? What’s your favorite food? You live in NYC! Whereabouts? I’ve lived there twice, once in the East Village and once in Soho before it became the boring hell it seems to be today. I hope Thursday totally belongs to you. ** jade, Yeah, I was very surprised by her sculpture too. IOW, no, that’s not nuts. I’m glad I was chill when we met. It was at the ‘Permanent Green Light’ screening near Lincoln Center, wasn’t it? I could be wrong. I did know those tracks you mentioned. The only band that ever gave me mild permanent hearing damage when I saw them live was Melt Banana. Yeah, if Dagan wants to say hey here, that’d be cool obviously. I want a magazine link, yes! And I’m sure I’m not the only one. When I first started publishing my transgressive stuff? Hm, I suppose it was probably really liberating, I can’t remember. It was pretty much equally hated and liked. It was weird that people assumed I was some kind of sadistic serial killer or something. I guess some people still do. Guys used to come up to me at readings and ask me where they could get snuff films and stuff. I guess I must have mostly enjoyed all of that because it didn’t stop me. Oh, don’t take a break on my account. I enjoy talking with you, but lay low if that feels right. Door’s always wide open, obviously. xo. ** malcolm, Thanks for the report about the new Solondz. Fingers crossed. I assume he probably has a hard time raising funds since his films aren’t big hits. And I know very well how hard it is to raise even the modest amount Zac and I need, much less the presumed million(s) he needs if he wants known actions to be in his stuff, which he obviously does. That’s so great about your parents. I think having that level of understanding and support is pretty fucking rare for, well, any young artist but especially a daring one like yourself. That’s great! My mom hated it when my work started becoming well known. Like, when my books would get reviewed in bigger places, she was horrified that people would think she was a really bad mother and person to have raised someone like me. I don’t think she ever read my books, no. I think my dad did read my ‘nice’ book ‘God Jr.’, but that’s all. But, no, my mom never came around. Her last words to me on her death bed were that her biggest regret was that she hadn’t taught me to do something that earned a lot of money. Oh, well. Enjoy your bed, if you’re in it. Or the surrounding area, if you’re not. ** l@rst, Thanks, pal. I need to go read that piece on ‘Solenoid’, and I will. Have the most awesome day! ** ShadeoutMapes, Hi! Yes, I especially think that third Crystal Castles album is a flawless perfect masterpiece. The only time I saw them live was in the post-Alice era with Edith Frances, but they were still really exciting. I hope they regroup. If you can’t see ‘PGL’ on your own, let me know and I can send you a link to the screener. Ha ha, your mom, wow! What you say about the things you’re working on just makes me more and more excited. You sent me something? I did see anything. Hm, I’ll go scour the different folders and try to find it. Thanks a lot! Talk again ultra-soon. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Oh, wow, that ‘Myth Makers’ show is huge. And packed with interesting artists. Not bad! Thanks for the link. I’ll go watch that parade in a minute. Lucky you, even. How much longer are you there? ** Right. I had remembered making a Pneumatic Tube Day here ages ago, but, when I went to go look for it, there was nothing, so I made a (new?) one because, god knows, Pneumatic Tubes warrant their own 24 blog hours. See you tomorrow.