In postal service Pneumatic post or
pneumatic mail is a system to deliver letters through pressurized air tubes. It was invented by the Scottish engineer
William Murdoch in the 19th century and was later developed by the
London Pneumatic Despatch Company. Pneumatic post systems were used in several large cities starting in the second half of the 19th century (including an 1866 London system powerful and large enough to transport humans during trial runs – though not intended for that purpose), but later were largely abandoned. A major network of tubes in
Paris (the
Paris pneumatic post) was in use until 1984, when it was abandoned in favor of computers and fax machines. The
Prague pneumatic post commenced for the public in 1889 in
Prague, now in the
Czech Republic, and the network extended approximately . Pneumatic post stations usually connect post offices, stock exchanges, banks and ministries. Italy was the only country to issue
postage stamps (between 1913 and 1966) specifically for pneumatic post. Austria, France, and Germany issued
postal stationery for pneumatic use. Typical applications are in
banks,
hospitals, and
supermarkets. Many large retailers used pneumatic tubes to transport cheques or other documents from cashiers to the accounting office. ; Historical use • 1853: linking the London Stock Exchange to the city's main telegraph station (a distance of ) • 1861: in London with the
London Pneumatic Despatch Company providing services from
Euston railway station to the
General Post Office and
Holborn • 1864: in
Liverpool connecting the
Electric and International Telegraph Company telegraph stations in Castle Street, Water Street, and the Exchange Buildings • 1864: in
Manchester to connect the
Electric and International Telegraph Company central offices at York Street, with branch offices at Dulcie Buildings and Mosley Street • 1865: in
Birmingham, installed by the
Electric and International Telegraph Company between the New Exchange Buildings in Stephenson Place and their branch office in Temple Buildings, New Street. • 1887: in Prague (until 2002 due to flooding), the
Prague pneumatic post • 1893: the first North American system was established in
Philadelphia by
Postmaster General John Wanamaker, who had previously employed the technology at his
department store. The system, which initially connected the downtown post offices, was later extended to the principal railroad stations, the stock exchanges, and many private businesses . It was operated by the
United States Post Office Department which later opened similar systems in cities such as
New York (connecting
Brooklyn and
Manhattan),
Chicago,
Boston, and
St. Louis. The last of these closed in 1953. • Other cities: Munich, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Hamburg, Rome, Naples, Milan, Marseille, Melbourne, Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe, Zurich, Lausanne, Geneva, Bern, Basel • 1950s-1989:
CIA headquarters (now known as the Old Headquarters Building)
In public transportation ;19th century In 1812,
George Medhurst first proposed, but never implemented, blowing passenger carriages through a tunnel. Precursors of pneumatic tube systems for passenger transport, the
atmospheric railway (for which the tube was laid between the rails, with a piston running in it suspended from the train through a sealable slot in the top of the tube) were operated as follows: • 1844–54:
Dublin and Kingstown Railway's
Dalkey Atmospheric Railway between Kingstown (
Dún Laoghaire) and
Dalkey,
Ireland () • 1846–47:
London and Croydon Railway between
Croydon and
New Cross,
London,
England () • 1847–48:
Isambard Kingdom Brunel's
South Devon Railway between
Exeter and
Newton Abbot,
England () • 1847–60:
Paris–Saint-Germain railway between Bois de Vésinet and
Saint-Germain-en-Laye,
France () In 1861, the
London Pneumatic Despatch Company built a system large enough to move a person, although it was intended for parcels. The inauguration of the new
Holborn Station on 10 October 1865 was marked by having the
Duke of Buckingham, the chairman, and some company directors blown through the tube to
Euston (a five-minute trip). The
Crystal Palace pneumatic railway was exhibited at
the Crystal Palace in 1864. This was a prototype for a proposed
Waterloo and Whitehall Railway that would have run under the
River Thames linking
Waterloo and
Charing Cross. Digging commenced in 1865 but was halted in 1868 due to financial problems. In 1867 at the
American Institute Fair in
New York,
Alfred Ely Beach demonstrated a long, diameter pipe that was capable of moving 12 passengers plus a conductor. One year after
New York City's first-ever elevated rail line went into service; in 1869, the
Beach Pneumatic Transit Company of New York secretly constructed a long, diameter pneumatic subway line under
Broadway, to demonstrate the possibilities of the new transport mode. ; 20th century In the 1920s, the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railways cooperated together to lay an elaborate system of 4,500 metre pneumatic tubing between four of their offices to Postal Station A at Union Station in Toronto, Canada. There was also a connection to the mail room at the Royal York Hotel. The newspapers the Star and Telegram joined into the system, laying pipes. In the 1960s,
Lockheed and
MIT with the
United States Department of Commerce conducted feasibility studies on a
vactrain system powered by ambient atmospheric pressure and "gravitational pendulum assist" to connect cities on the country's East Coast. consists of a cylindrical vertical shaft (typically made of transparent plastic), and a passenger capsule (also transparent) within the shaft which moves vertically by means of differential air pressure above and below. The main advantage that it requires neither a pit below or a loft above the shaft. For ascending operations, a vacuum pump at the top of the elevator shaft creates a low pressure by drawing air from above the capsule while below the greater normal atmospheric pressure is permitted to enter at the lower (ground floor) level below the capsule providing lift. To descend, electronically controlled valves inside the tubular shaft regulate the entry and exit of air within the cylinder lowering the car smoothly by means of programmed operation. In the event of a failure of the vacuum pump or electronically controlled valves, the trapped volume of air below the capsule acts as a cushion that is allowed to slowly escape by means of a mechanical valve, gently returning the capsule to the lowest level.
In money transfer In large retail stores, pneumatic tube systems were used to transport sales slips and money from the salesperson to a centralized tube room, where
cashiers could make change, reference credit records, and so on. Many banks with
drive-throughs also use pneumatic tubes. Blood preservations are transported, where weight and transport duration matter as well as preventing haemolysis caused by centrifugal and accelerating forces. Pneumatic tube systems are also used in hospitals to transport
X-rays, patient documents, general documents, drugs and test results. pneumatic tube systems have been shown to handle heavy liter-capacity
IV bags with significantly fewer jams compared to the systems.
Department stores To manage its mail order business the department store Sears built "massive warehouses, like its central facility in Chicago, in which messages to various departments and assembly workers were sent through pneumatic tubes". Many other department stores had pneumatic tube systems in the 20th century, such as Jacksons of Reading and Myer in Melbourne, Australia. The
National Library of Australia's building (opened 1968), incorporates a pneumatic tube system for sending book requests from the reading rooms to the book stacks. The system is no longer used, but remains partially operational, and is demonstrated on behind the scenes tours.
Waste disposal The use of pneumatic tubes in waste disposal units include the
Masjid al-Haram, Mecca, GlashusEtt in the Hammarby Sjöstad area of Stockholm (Sweden), Old Montreal (Canada), Disney World (US) and Roosevelt Island and Hudson Yards (US).
In production Pneumatic tube systems are used in production plants. Uses include conveying spare parts, measuring instruments, tools, or work pieces alongside
conveyor belts or in the production process. In industrial laboratories samples are transported through the pneumatic tube systems. These can be conveyed in any physical state (solid, liquid, gas) and at any temperature. For example, the industrial company
ThyssenKrupp sends steel samples through pneumatic tubes at a rate of per second from the furnace to the laboratory. ==Technical characteristics==