Showing posts from category: Old technology
Pneumatic Tube Mail Services in Europe: The Express Delivery of the Nineteenth Century
In this modern world of 24/7 online global communications and instant messaging systems, it is interesting to take a look at an earlier age’s emerging technology which had the objective of fast-tracking communications between people in different parts of rapidly modernising cities. This novel way of moving mail around drew on the subterranean reaches of urban centres to create channels for transporting them.
Wm MurdochIt started with the London Stock Exchange in the 1850s…traders trying to buy and sell at the most propitious times of the trading day relied on telegraphs to communicate quickly with their people. The problem at the time was that telegraphs were regularly subjected to delays and hold-ups. A swifter way to communicate was needed for business success, and the technology to do so already existed in Scottish engineer William Murdoch‘s invention of the pneumatic tube in the 1830s.
Enter J Latimer Clark, an electrical engineer, with a patent “for conveying letters or parcels between places by the pressure of air and vacuum”. Clark’s delivery system powered by compressed and depressed air was implemented to connect the London Stock Exchange with the HQs of the Electrical Telegraph Company through a 660-foot long pneumatic tube. By the 1860s the stock exchanges in Berlin and Paris had followed London’s lead. Postal services for both commercial and personal transmittances were a natural fit for the pneumatic tube. Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Dublin got their own networks, whilst on the Continent, Berlin’s Rohrpost was introduced in 1865 and Paris went public with Poste Pneumatique in 1879. Other cities got in on pneumatic post and the practice spread to places as far away as Melbourne and Buenos Aires, and most anywhere in between.
The London pneumatic tube mail train at its formative stage!London Pneumatic Despatch Company In 1859 Latimer Clark with Thomas Webster Rammell put forward a proposal for an underground tube network in Central London. The city’s General Post Office was chosen as the nucleus of the network because it was “the routing hub of the whole country’s” transport system [Julian Stray]. The two engineers with cashed-up and influential backers formed the London Pneumatic Despatch Company to build a large-scale, underground pneumatic railway✱ with the purpose of transporting mail bags and small parcels on railcars through tunnels. At first LPDC’s prospects of success looked promising, but several developments and reversals (a financial crisis in 1866, logistics problems, technical drawbacks, and the Post Office getting cold feet over the project) saw the Company fold and its operations close in the 1870s [‘London’s Lost Pneumatic Railway: The World’s 2nd Oldest Underground’, (Long Branch Mike, 12-Apr-2015), Reconnections London Transport and Beyond, www.londonreconnections.com].
(Photo: Science Photo Library)
Despite its failures LPDC’s underground railway did capture the public’s imagination and inspired other imitators. There were experiments elsewhere in the 1860s to try to establish a viable pneumatic train network – at Croydon, Devon and Dublin. Ultimately though, for a variety of reasons, these came to nothing [‘London’s Victorian Hyperloop: the forgotten pneumatic railway beneath the capital’s streets’, New Statesman, 18-Dec-2013, www.newstatesman.com].
Capsule [National Postal Museum (Smithsonian)The principles of “blow and suck” The pneumatic post services of the day used pressure and air vacuums to transmit mail through a network of tubes. The process went like this: people wanting to expedite the delivery of an important document would take it to the post office where it would be rolled up and placed inside a metal or aluminium capsule. A postal clerk (in New York these employees were known as ‘rocketeers’) would drop the capsule into a hatch which corresponded to the marked lane for its intended destination…by pressing a button the capsule was transported by compressed air through a network of tubes beneath the pavement. Air from the transmitting end blew the capsule in a forward direction along the tubes. At the receiving end of the line a machine would suck the propelled capsule towards it (in the same way the suction of a vacuum cleaner functions!).
A cutting edge over conventional 19th century delivery modes Using pneumatic power to transport letters (subterranean mail) and other items had readily apparent advantages in its unfettered immediacy…the reliance on horse-drawn vehicles and messengers on bicycles meant that delivery was impeded by the ever-increasingly congested streets of burgeoning cities, pneumatic post transported underground had no such obstacles and delivery was infinitely faster!
Parisian Poste Pneumatique network (Musée de La Poste)Paris: Poste Pneumatique Paris, as much as any modern metropolis, wholeheartedly embraced pneumatic tube transportation from the get-go! By the 1930s, when the service was at its peak, Paris had some 466 kilometres of pneumatic tubes. Cost was and remained an issue though…in 1975 the cost of sending one pneu☯ in Paris was eight-times that of having a posted letter delivered. As the 20th century rolled on patronage of the pneumatic post system dwindled, in 1984 Poste Pneumatique closed down for good! It’s inevitable demise was a combination of the service’s high cost and the superiority of newer communications technology (fax, telex) which made it obsolete [‘Pneumatic tubes and how mail was moved in Paris for more than a century’, Larry Rosenblum, (World Stamps), 02-Oct-2016, www.linns.com]
Prague PTT engine roomBohemian Express Post: Prague’s pneumatic post system Prague’s pneumatic post is the only surviving post system of this kind still intact in the world. It entered service in the Czech capital in 1889, the fifth in the world to be connected, after London, Vienna, Berlin and Paris. The Prague system operated from a central point, the main post office in Wenceslas Námêstí, and conveyed letters, documents and information to other post offices in the city, to government offices, to banks and to other important institutions. It started with the despatch of mainly telegrams, later telexes were sent through this medium. The city network of tubes covered a radius of 60km. Around 1970 a test was done of its speed of service vis-vís an on-road messenger delivery service. The pneumatic tubes won, delivering a capsule of 50 telegrams to Prague Castle in eight minutes✾ [‘Pneumatic Post System in Prague’ (Jakob Serÿch, June 2004), http://www.capsu.org/features/pneumatic_tube_system_in_prague.html]. In the 1990s Prague pneumatic post was despatching up to 10,000 documents a day! Unfortunately the European floods of 2002 put paid to the Czech pneumatic postal service, Telefonica decided the repairs needed to the tubes was too costly and in 2012 sold the system to Czech software entrepreneur Zsenêk Dražil, an enthusiast of old technologies. Dražil’s ultimate plans for the service are still unclear, but he has hinted at the tourism possibility of it being opened up to the public as a “national technical monument” [‘Radio Praha ❘ in English’, (Daniela Lazarová, Czech Radio, 11-Oct-2003 and Jan Richer, ‘New Owner Promises Bright Future for World’s Largest Pneumatic Post System’ Czech Radio, 08-Aug-2012)].
PostScript: A sample of anecdotal stories associated with pneumatic tube systems Stories abound about the unauthorised and unorthodox uses of the pneumatic tube networks in different countries by postal workers. Its a trait of human nature that employees in the familiarity of their work environs are known to “push the envelope” and try to get away with things wherever they possibly can, and this sphere of work was no different. Staff of the Prague pneumatic tube system for instance (according to some of the stories told) were known to use it to send sausages and bread rolls to each other! Similarly in New York it was an open secret that post office workers on Manhattan used the system to receive their daily lunch orders from a well-known Bronx sandwich shop…the shop would dispatch the lunches via the tubes from the Bronx PO to the Manhattan PO! The pneumatic tubes were also sometimes utilised to play jokes on staff at another PO, eg, live mice sent through the tubes to get a predictable reaction from the startled female employees receiving the canisters at the other end; a live tortoise-shell cat returned in the same mail bag in which it had been sent, and so on.
Receiving point with collection trays⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸ ✱ the world’s second underground railway after the limited line from Paddington to Farringdon opened in 1863 ☯ an item sent by pneumatic post in France was known as a pneu ✾ a similar test was conducted earlier on the New York PTT system where the underground tube delivery easily eclipsed a motor vehicle delivery which had to contend with heavy Manhattan traffic
Not only the Lonely Children … Argonauts of the World Unite!
In the 1950s and ’60s just about every self-respecting teenager and pre-teen (the term “teeny-bopper” was still awaiting the onset of the ’70s) in New South Wales joined the Argonauts Club. Or so it seemed…I say “just about everyone” because although the Argonauts had mass appeal to children, when I was a kid, strangely its existence barely registered on my consciousness, let alone leading to my actually joining up! There was probably a couple of reasons for this: in that distant, Neanderthal era of communications, my parents habitually never rested the wireless dial on the ABC (they were not part of the ABC ‘listenerati’ as far as I recall). The only time the dial ever got within cooee of the 2BL frequency was when I switched over ritualistically to the ABC during a cricket test match.
Another factor in the Argonauts Show passing pretty much right under the radar for me was that it was a late afternoon children’s radio program (we spelt it ‘programme’ in those more formal, longhand days) and post-school afternoon and nights during my youth were incontestably reserved for television, then still a relatively novel phenomena. When it came to the wireless I was an avid morning listener to commercial networks like 2UE and 2UW. Gary O’Callaghan and “Sammy Sparrow” was more my style in the sixties. I can’t be sure if there had been a Sammy Sparrow radio club but as I’ve still got a Sammy Sparrow badge kicking round the house somewhere which probably confirms it.
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Your (early) ABC ⇓
The Argonauts Club in Australia had a long history, it’s first manifestation in the early 1930s run from Victoria was short-lived. The club was revived in 1941 as a Sydney-based entity and continued until it was disbanded in 1972. Today it lives on in the vast repertoire of fond and nostalgic memories of middle-aged and older Australians.
The Argonauts’ format on radio was a six day-a-week segment, part of a radio program called The Children’s Session, later rebranded as the ‘Children’s Hour’ (the Session’s catchy song which introduced the program each week was very familiar to me). The program’s presenters were assigned Argonaut-themed pseudonyms, foremost among these was former English actor Atholl Fleming who was ‘Jason’. Others were given on-air personas such as ‘Phidas’ (artist Jeffery Smart who had a kids’ art appreciation spot), ‘Argus’ and ‘Icarus’. Founding compere Ida Elizabeth Lea was ‘Argo 1’. Co-compere, Actor John Ewart, was ‘Argo 29’. Guest presenters on the show included Australian poets AD Hope, Mary Gilmore and actor Peter Finch.
⇓ 1950 ABC blurb for the Argonauts: handily ‘Jason’ had a Sydney address – 55 Market St – so children could write to him!
Young Australians between seven and 17 (club membership was restricted to this age range) were invited to join the Argonauts Club, and join they did! The fifties were the pinnacle of Argonautdom, national membership reached 43,000 in 1953 [Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November 1953]. Upon joining the club youngsters would be allocated an imaginary place on one of the boats commanded by Jason and his Argonauts in their mythical quest for the Golden Fleece. The new member would become one of the “Merry Band of Rowers”, receive an enamel badge, take a pledge and be assigned to a ship with a Greek mythic name and an oar number on the vessel. On the radio segment members were referred to only by their Argonaut name and integer. Interestingly this anticipated the practice of anonymous usernames and avatars, a dominant symbol in this age of the internet [‘The Argonauts Club’, Cat Politics, www.catpolitics.blogspot.com].
Some of the youthful members went on to be prominent names and celebrities (especially in the arts) in their adult lives in and beyond Australia – including:
Tony Morphett (screenwriter) Antiphon 39 John Barron (Premier of South Australia) Charops 37 with Golden Fleece Margaret Throsby (ABC broadcaster & icon) Androcles 26 Nick Enright (dramatist & playwright) Alastor 35 Michael Dransfield (poet) Eumolphus 24 Mike Walsh (TV presenter & theatre owner) Pontos 7 Anne Summers (writer & columnist) Pytheus 41 with Dragon’s Tooth Christopher Koch (writer) Gaza 16 Margot Oliver (filmmaker) Herodotus 31 Allan Humphries (ABC weatherman) Ampelus 38 Peter Sculthorpe (composer) Jason 50 Joanna Mendelssohn (academic, art & design) Roxana 38 Rolf Harris (disgraced celebrity painter & entertainer) Echo 32, Perth Club Barry Humphries (entertainer, writer, cross-dresser) Ithome 32 [Rob Johnson, ‘The Golden Age Of The Argonauts’, The Age, Friday September 13, 1996, reproduced in www.urania.com.au]
The Argonauts wireless segment always began with the stirring club song extolling the youthful audience to “Row! Row! Merry oarsmen, Row!” … followed by the greeting from “ship captain Jason”: “Hello Argonauts, good rowing!” – which became a sort of pass or codeword for the Argonaut brethren to greet each other by, much in the way that secret brotherhoods do.
In the Argosy part of the show Argonauts were encouraged to submit drawings, stories and poems to the program, the best of which, presenters would read out aloud on air. ‘Rowers’ could earn marks or points which if accumulated sufficiently, would afford the member certain honours and status such as a Dragon’s Tooth Certificate, a Golden Fleece and the even more meritorious Golden Fleece & Bar. Holders of certificates often were rewarded with prizes, usually books. Children’s stories like Ruth Park’s The Muddle-headed Wombat were read on the radio, many former argonauts have recalled that their life-long listening habits were formed whilst their ears were ‘glued’ to the Children’s Hour [Urania, ibid.]. Stories were serialised on the Argonauts Show, serials such as ‘The Country of the Skull’ were compulsory listening for teenage devotees of the Children’s Hour. Similarly the ‘Melody Man’s’ segment helped foster the musical interests of school-age listeners.
One thing that strikes me is just how many of the ‘Rowers’ remember their Argonaut alias, given how long, and in some cases very long, ago it was! Obviously it was a huge thing in the lives of so many school-age children around the middle third of the 20th century. The number of former members (Panthea 32, Sisyphus 16, Erechtheum 33, Polybus 21, Hecuba 12, Sestus 50, Theseus 44, Equestor 3, etc. etc.) who lovingly comment on ABC Message Boards and similar online platforms is a testimony to this [ABC Message Board HYS – Messages, www.abc2b.net.au].
TriremeFootnote: A bit pendantic to mention but there was a curious anachronism about the mathematics to do with the ships – triremes in the Heroic era of Greece (when the Argonauts legend is set) had a rowing galley of 170 oarsmen, however none of the ships fabricated by the ABC radio program ever had more than 50 places allocated to them.
The Argonauts radio show was a blessing and even maybe a salvation for many children especially for those living in remote parts of Australia. Many in fact were listening from outside Australia in places as far afield as Port Moresby and Aotearoa! It helped all of them in their isolation, compensating for the loneliness they were experiencing in the country. As one emeritus Argonaut put it, it gave isolated listeners “a sense of belonging to a community”. This was even more the case during World War II for children in rural northern Australia who gained a tremendous solace from the program at a time of anxieties about the possibility of Japanese invasion [Urania, ibid.]. A lot of children who migrated to Australia in the immediate years after the War (in that era more or less exclusively from the UK and Ireland) joined up with the Argonauts and it is clear from their recollections that the program softened the impact somewhat in trying to settle in to a new and unfamiliar land.
Inevitably, the popularity of the Argonauts program waned. In the late sixties the segment was cut to just one hour a week at 5pm on Sunday. In 1972 ABC Radio pulled the plug entirely on the show, apparently because a survey found that most of those still listening were over the age of 40! The inexorable encroachment of television into the lives of children also would have been a massively-significant factor in its ultimate demise [Urania, ibid.].
A few years ago FNFSA (Friends of the National Film and Sound Archive Inc) set up an online form to allow former Argonauts to record their membership details and recollections of the program [www.archfriends.org.au]. The response was impressive. The Argonauts Registration Form lists a vast range of ship names, an armada far greater than Jason’s meagre sum of triremes. The overwhelming response further illustrates what a phenomenal impact the Argonauts had on the formative lives of young Australians from the forties to the early seventies.
The deprivations imposed on Australian families by the Depression followed closely upon by WWII were great on children (as on the community at large). The Argonauts radio program gave youngsters an outlet to escape these harsh realities. It afforded them a chance to imagine themselves as members of a magical, mythical world, it entertained them and it inspired them to delve more into the worthy pursuits of reading and writing. For many of them it became a lifelong habit.
