You know, those air tubes that you stick a small cylinder in with documents scrolled up inside, and they shoot around to wherever.
Most bank drive thru’s have these still, but there such low scale, that it’s not what I’m asking about. I’ve seen old movies where these cool air tubey things ran all through the bowels of giant office buildings. They seemed to be super popular in the 20’s and 30’s.
(If you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch Alec Baldwin’s movie The Shadow. Not an “old” movie, but you’ll see what I am talking about. These air tubes also made for a hilarious episode of Just Shoot Me. “Donny says vacuum!!!”)
Does any place in the U.S. or world still use these things on a grand scale?
Does anyone work in a large office building that still has and uses these?
I don’t know if any are still in use. The last time I saw one was at the drive-through at a bank. The system was called the Pneumatic Telegraph and the linked page has some interesting stuff about it.
Dang, MSK, you stole my line! Every time we go to the bank drive-thru, either Mr. S or I will say, “It works with magnets!” and then the other will shout, “Donnie says VACUUM!”
Anyway, back around 1980 I toured a large, brand-new office building (AAL Building, north of Appleton, WI) that had little mail “trolleys” that traveled throughout the building. It made me think of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
I volunteer at a hospital where such a system is still in use except that it seems to be broken about 1/4 of the time. This is a nice hospital too. Not one that just hasn’t gotten any new equipment since the 30’s.
We still use em at the Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County to send book requests to the non-public stacks. Occasionally a Page, in a fit of levity, will toss a handful of paperclips in the tube ahead of the returning cartridge.
Thirty-seven years ago the Pentagon used Pneumatic Tube Mail for all unclassified interoffice mail. The Pentagon sends a lot of interoffice mail, and it is very big. I don’t know how long after that they continued to use it.
Tris
“The ephemeral and the eternal are the same.” ~ Gordon Dickson ~
Children’s Hospital in Seattle uses them, and based on a conversation I overheard between two nurses, I think they’re fairly commonly used in hospitals in this country.
However, they can be a bit difficult to manage…one day when I was there, the tube openings all had big “OUT OF ORDER” signs on them. Apparently someone had improperly packaged a blood sample, and it exploded all over the inner workings of the pneumatic tube, thus causing the whole thing to have to be sterilized.
I see them in use at CostCo (aka Club Price). A cashier will generally stuff a wad of cash along with a slip into a tube shuttle and send it careening off into oblivion. It’s safer than leaving a cash register unattended and a lot quicker than having to call over some office drone to shlep the dough.
My favorite garage, a Canadian Tire, also has one. The garage where repairs are performed is a seperate building, though on the same lot as a large retail store. If you pay by credit card, your card gets “tubed” along with the bill and eventually comes back with the proper slip for your signature.
The first time I ever saw these things was in an old Tweety and Sylvester cartoon where Tweety rides the hose (you can see this sort of technology lends itself to entendre) in a large department store. At the time, I didn’t have any clear idea what the tubes were for. When I finally saw one up close for real, my first thought was “oh, cool.”
The Cinemark theater where I used to work was built brand new about 2 years ago and they use it. The system goes from behind the concession stand up to the “counting room” or wherever the managers count the money. This is in NE Ohio.
Seems to me that the idea of the pneumatic tube is something that will be forever convenient and useful until they come up with some way to transport things through the air, like in Star Trek
My wife works for the VA at a large facility here in Florida. The tube system is very much in use there for the various administrative offices–I don’t think it is used in the hospital.
