The company I work for uses them.
If you buy something in the retail store, the salespeople take a copy of the reciept, put it in one of those canisters and send it to the warehouse, where the warehouse staff pick the item and send it back (via elevator) to the customer.
They’ve been trying to replace the system for some time now. They may even get it done at some point.
Zev Steinhardt
I’ve run cat-5 network wiring through these pipes for a couple of installs. Although the nice clean pipes with no sharp corners made a lot of stuff easier, neither system had been used in a long time. Since the offices in the building had been remodled and moved around through the years, some of the pipes had the annoying tendency to go up and then just end blindly in the walls or floors just shy of where you wanted the wire to go.
At one point we tried to get part of one system working using a shop-vac as the power source, but it didn’t work all that well. I’m not sure if the shop vac was just underpowered for the task (in which case I’d love to see the vacuums they use) or if there was a crack in the pipe that was letting air leak out.
And every time I’m at Costco I always say both “Chicken pot, chicken pot, chicken pot piiieeeeee” and “Donny says vacuum”, in the apropriate places. One time the cashier actually got it, and pointed at the tube, while laughing “No Donny, magnets!” Most of the time they just look at me like I’ve got extra eyes or something.
So… that’s how Ed sends the column questions to Cecil! 
Hey Ed, you might want to consider the above if it’s not done that way already. He heh.
This is a fun topic. Every home should come with “sucky tubes.” Imagine the possibilities:
send…
[ul]
[li]dirty laundry to laundry room[/li][li]trash to garbage can[/li][li]mail & newspaper from front door to desk[/li][li]beer cans from fridge to recliner[/li][li]empty beer cans to recycle bin[/li][li]etc etc[/li][/ul]
The possibilities are endless!
There used to be one with clear plastic tubes at the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose. I don’t know if it’s still there.
I was a manager at a 20-plex movie theater and we had a pneumatic system that linked each of the three box offices and three concession stands directly with the safe room. This was obviously very helpful because (1) it prevented the managers from walking on the floor and outside the building (for the box offices) carrying large amounts of money, and (2) it prevented a lot of traffic going in & out of the safe room–a room that’s sealed off from everyone where only the safe manager and money counters can go. The pneumatic system also made it possible to send change (quarters, small bills) to the stations if they needed it. This megaplex was built from the ground up in 1997, so the pneumatic system was not merely an already existing feature from an older renovated building.
Take a look at New York’s first subway.
Booth library at Eastern Illinois University has the tubes which run through the old stacks to locations unknown (to me, anyway). There’s one tube that runs along a corner in a niche way back in the corner. When my friend and I opened the hatch, air was still running through it and she let a scrap of paper fly on up, so I assume they’re being used for something.
Doh! I somehow missed that Doug had answered immediately after you asked, E.S. 
Ok… um… enjoy the additional link.