I work in a hospital, and we just got an upgraded pneumatic tube system a couple of years ago. The old one worked on magnets (when it worked at all), the new one is all nifty and computerized. We can track tubes, enter secret codes so only the person who knows the code can get the tube, and other nifty arrangements.
Best of all, it generally functions!! Yippee yahoo etc!!
Last time I was in University Hospital in Seattle they were using them as well.
Costco (like home depot) uses them to transport cash to the counting offices. They aren’t as cool as the old school Pneumatic tubes -which were often outfitted in glass panels and nifty brass fittings. The new ones are boring gray PVC. About as much fun to look at as the plumbing under my sink.
The new Verio Colocation offices in Portland is in an old building from the 20’s. It is outfitted with Pneumatic tubes. I don’t think they work, but the tubes are still in place. Verio (which is a major player in providing internet bandwidth) has placed a sign on one of the tubes that says “back up e-mail service” or something to that effect.
I always thought buildings with Pneumatic tubes in place would make great conduits for pulling telephone and ethernet cables. 
Personally, even if it is a rather clunky method of transporting documents, I hate to see it die. Pneumatic mail is just damn cool.
I lived in Niigata, Japan for two years and had to make regular visits to the university hospital there. They had one too. So they’re not just a U.S. hospital thing.
Winthrop & Lauder’s office building uses them.
Just watch drew Carey.
In all the buildings I’ve been in, they were out of service.
Mail trolley/conveyor belt thingy: I took calls for AAA road service in Philly in the 1990’s, and to send the service call to the dispatcher, we dropped the little form onto the conveyor belt and sent it on it’s way.
They finally got computerized around the late 90’s.
The hospitals I’m familiar with have these for transporting drugs and orders to and from the pharmacy, administrative paperwork, lab requests, etc. The VA I worked at had VERY strict rules about transporting lab specimens via pneumatic tube. Certain specimens (those in glass tubes, for example) could not be sent, but blood products from the blood bank could be. It’s a HUGE hassle to clean up blood in the tubes from a broken vial, plus the motion of the carrier could agitate a specimen and render it unfit to test.
Robin
One of these systems is alive and well at the large 20 year old suburban hospital where I work.
It is in daily use, and breaks down only occaisionally.
J&R musicworld in NYC uses them. Not the biggest operation in the world, but everytime I go there the the vacuum tube still fascinates me.
New York City’s post office used to maintain an extensive network of pneumatic tubes in the Financial District. They’re long abandoned for mail use, but a few years ago (before the telecoms bust) several entrepreneurs proposed to run fiber-optic cable through them. Don’t know if it ever actually happened.
The’re also favored in the New York Public Library’s research centers. From a post at deadmedia.org:
The Industry Standard ran in interesting article on pneumatic tubes, too: click here.
On my ship, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser built in 1988, we had this system. It ran between the bridge, Combat Information Center and the radio room.
We would sometimes fill the tube with hole-punchouts (waste paper from a hole punch) and send the tube open to radio. When it hit the end, paper confetti would fly everywhere.
These things are freakin’ cool! The only places I know in my town that has this system is:
bank drive thrus
Sam’s Club
Meijer (a store like Walmart) tubes send money to cash office
I haven’t seen them anywhere else. There once was a huge major department store in South Bend, named Robertson’s, that used to have the system. I never saw it in use, but my mom remembers it.
BTW: I love Hudsucker Proxy too. That’s a damn cool movie. I forgot they had the tubes in that.
I think you’re thinking of Futurama on Fox.
As mentioned, a lot of bank drive-throughs have these. Some in the Boston area do.
Too many places had them revoved long ago. There was apparently one at the desk in the center of the Boston Public Library’s Main Reasearch Library Reading Room, but that disappeared a long time ago. There used to be one at American Optical’s main building, but the whole building is gone now.
There’s a working one in the Children’s section of the Boston Museum of Science.
My favourite line from the episode is the one right after he goes on the huge explanation of how they work…Donnie looks at everyone staring at him, then says:
“Chicken pot, chicken pot, chicken pot PIEEEE!!!”
My mom and I STILL crack up at that line
I have nothing to say about the OP. I’ve never seen these in use, either, but it appears that that’s simply due to the places I go to :). I agree that they’re cool, though!
At least until 1998.
I worked in the Air Force Operations Group (AFOG), making weather briefings. One of which we created in Powerpoint, printed, stuffed in a canister which sucked it to who-knows-where.
The AFOG moved out of our rat-infested 70’s era basement section into newly remodeled digs in 1998. The remodeled section still had pneumatic tubes, and judging from the rushing air noise they were functional, but we no longer used them.
And isn’t anyone going to mention the movie, Brazil?
I love that movie.
Tesla had an idea to build a trans-Atlantic subway using those things, but then figured out that it’d be nearly impossible to do. Still, the things are way cool!
Although there is one in the floor where Carey works, it’s usually out of order.
Also, Springfield Nuclear Power Plant has one. Although it’s not very good…I think a package-or a fired employee-ended up in India once…
My wife arranged an equipment lease last year for a company that sells and installs these. When she was explaining all this to me she called them “sucky tubes”. I don’t know if she just forgot what the company guy called them or if he used that description himself, however.
He was installing one in a new hospital building at the time.
I think they are very cool and wish I had one in my house.