Pneumatic tubes transit (PTT): a system that propels cylindrical containers through networks of tubes towards a chosen destination using compressed air or by partial vacuum [‘Pneumatic tubes’, Wikipedia, http://www.wikipedia.org]

PTT, “Whoosh✱ and Go!” technology, the 19th century’s version of “Tap and Go!”
Jason Farman has described the application of pneumatic tubes to postal services in the 19th century as “the instant messaging systems of their day”. According to Farman, being able to use pneumatic post to communicate, gave people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries an “instant connexion”…pneumatic post meant that they were able to “keep in touch all day long”⊡. Moreover people saw the pneumatic tubes’ facility to deliver articles rapidly as “a symbol of modernity” [‘Pneumatic tubes: the instant messaging technology that transformed the world’, James Farman, interview with ABC Australia, 13-Jun-2018].

Sketch of AE Beach’s pneumatic transit tunnel

America’s first pneumatic-powered subway
American entrepreneurs were following developments in pneumatic tube transport in Europe in the second half of the 19th century and were keen to move into the field. It fell to inventor and publisher of the magazine Scientific American Alfred Ely Beach to lead the way. Beach was less interested in the postal service than in moving people. In 1867 he trialled the first subway passenger service, later named the Beach Pneumatic Transit, in New York City. Initially the service was popular with the public, but Beach experienced opposition from Tammany Hall♉ and its notorious head ‘Boss’ Tweed, and from other vested business interests. Beach got round opposition by flagging that he would also construct a pneumatic tube to cart mail underground around NYC. Unfortunately Beach ran into both technical difficulties and funding issues (exacerbated by the financial crisis of 1873) and the project to extend the subway was stillborn.

PPT system despatch point (Washington DC, early 1940s)

Manhattan mail transfer – the eastern seaboard subway
It wasn’t until 1893 that an urban mail service in the US introduced the PTT system, and this was in Philadelphia (beating New York by four years). The New York City system linked the General Post Office with 22 other post offices covering an area of 27 miles. At its optimal level of output, five capsules each containing around 500 letters could be despatched in a minute (one every 12 seconds travelling at 30-35 mph). A government estimate in the day put the total transmitted by tube at 20,000 letters per day![‘The Pneumatic Mail Tubes: New York’s Hidden Highway And Its Development’ (Robert A Cohen, Aug 1999), www.about.usps.com]. Several other American cities followed Philadelphia and New York in establishing underground mail networks – Boston, Brooklyn (a separate entity to New York before the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge), Chicago and St. Louis.

Manhattan pneumatic mail route

Despite the clear advantage PPT had in speed of delivery over conventional mail despatch, it did not make the hand-delivered mail system redundant. At its zenith in New York PPT never accounted for more than about one-third of the Post Office’s total mail delivery. Other cities in the US were similar although Boston reached about 50 per cent at its maximum output!) [Cohen].

PPT systems, limitations and drawbacks
By the early 20th century the cost for US service providers using the pneumatic tube system had become prohibitive. By 1918 the Post Office was forking out $US17,000 per mile per year [‘Underground Mail Road: Modern Plan for All-but-forgotten Delivery System’, (Robin Pogrebin), New York Times, 07-May-2001]. In addition to cost there were other flaws in tubal delivery that made it impractical. Many mail items were too large and bulky to fit into the tube carriers, and when they did fit, the system was far from seamless. It took critical time to unload heavy items at the receiving end and sometimes the system would clog up during periods of high traffic (requiring delays in the delivery process while workers located the obstructing parcel and dug up the street to get to it) [‘Pneumatic Tubes’, Dead Media Archive, (NYU – Dept of Media, Culture and Communication), www.cultureandcommunication.org].

A maze of tubing

In addition to cost, other early 20th century factors that prompted the decline of the pneumatic post in America include the growing volume of mail, limited system capacities, and the belief that the advent of the automobile made the tubes “practically obsolete” [Annual Report of the Postmaster General, (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1918. pp. 19–22. Retrieved 8 June 2015, cited in ‘Pneumatic tube mail in New York City’, Wikipedia, http://www.en.m.wikipedia.org].

Pneumatic tube systems tend to work better on a smaller, more localised, scale – as evident in the type of enterprises and institutions that productively employ the pneumatic tube technology today (as outlined in the PostScript following)…they are also more effective (and more economical) over shorter distances, such as encompassing a single city only.

PostScript: Pneumatic tubes in the contemporary world
In the age of fiberoptics and the internet, it might be thought that there is no place for old technologies like PTT. But pneumatic tube systems today still play a vital function in the everyday workings of organisations and institutions including banks, hospitals, supermarkets, department stores, libraries and other public utilities♮.

Technology watchers have hinted at the possibility of a Renaissance of pneumatic technology. Jacob Aron has made the perceptive point that even in an age where online communication is paramount, there is still the physical necessity of transporting goods by road. This is where pneumatic tube networks have a competitive edge…Aron poses the question: “can tubes be (a) more efficient and greener” way of delivery❂ [‘Newmatics: antique tubular messaging returns’, (J Aron) New Scientist, 13-Aug-2013, www.newscientist.com]

Roosevelt Is: narrow stretch of land 3.2km long in NY’s East River

Many areas of society unrelated to postal systems currently use PTT…on Roosevelt Island (NYC) the locals have used pneumatic tubes to dispose of its garbage since 1975 (something similar has been proposed for Manhattan to tackle its mountains of trash) [‘Proposal maps out pneumatic tubes system to take out New York’s trash’, (Dante D’Orazio), The Verge, 24-Sep-2013, www.theverge.com].

Many hospitals rely on networks of tubes for their internal communications – the prestigious Stanford Hospital in California uses the technology to move blood, lab samples and medicine around the facility. Pneumatic tubes systems today are of course computer-driven and much more complex, Stanford Hospital’s network contains 124 stations. Future applications for PTT continue to be visualised…entrepreneur/inventor Elon Musk has proposed that his pneumatic-powered ‘Hyperloop’ will be capable of transporting passengers in a pod between cities at 800 mph [‘Underground Mail’, (2017), www.computerimages.com/musings].

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✱ the sound the pneumatically propelled mail capsules made when they went down the shute
⊡ a characterisation very familiar to today’s social media dominated world
♉ the Democratic Party political machine which had a stranglehold on NYC politics at the time
♮ such as the Library of Congress (US) and the Russian State Library in Moscow. The ongoing utility of pneumatic networks contrasts with the bad wrap pneumatic tube systems have received from writers of fiction over the years, eg, works such as 1984 and the movie Brazil have tended to equate them with “creaking, bureaucratic dystopias” [Jacob Aron]
❂ although the other x-factor player here is 3D-printing – if it realises its full commercial potential it would tick those same boxes with perhaps greater utility

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