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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host

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Speaker 1: job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio.

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Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? It is time for

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Speaker 1: us to listen to a classic episode of tech Stuff.

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Speaker 1: This one published April. It is part one of a

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Speaker 1: two part series. So that's a spoiler for next week,

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Speaker 1: right anyway, this one is titled A Series of Tubes

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Speaker 1: Part one. Enjoy. So one of the cool things that

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Speaker 1: you brought to light is that, uh, you know that

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Speaker 1: these are not just little systems that are used within

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Speaker 1: like that bank single building to take your bank receipt

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Speaker 1: to the teller when you don't feel like getting out

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Speaker 1: of your car, right, That these actually used to be

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Speaker 1: and in some cases maybe still are much more senses. Yeah. See,

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Speaker 1: there used to be these huge networks of tubes buried

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Speaker 1: beneath the cities that let people send messages to each

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Speaker 1: other faster than ever before. Yeah, I've heard of this

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Speaker 1: the Internet. It's a it's a series of tubes. Uh no, no,

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Speaker 1: before before the Internet, our ponet but that was only

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Speaker 1: like three computers and it was it was in Wow. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: pneumatic tubes date back quite a ways. And so yeah,

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Speaker 1: when when Lauren said we're going to talk about a

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Speaker 1: series of tubes, I thought we were going to talk

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Speaker 1: about the whole you know, good old Senator Ted from

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Speaker 1: Alaska talking about how the Internet is a series of tubes, which,

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Speaker 1: by the way, just for the record, I think is

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Speaker 1: a decent analogy. Yeah, yeah, I mean it was. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it is funny, but it was. And also, as it

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Speaker 1: turns out, some telecom cables are currently being housed in

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Speaker 1: old pneumatic tubes. So it is a series of tubes.

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Speaker 1: Yeah awesome. So what exactly is a pneumatic tube. Well,

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Speaker 1: it is eight hipeline that uses air pressure to move

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Speaker 1: a canister from one point to another. Okay, that seems

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Speaker 1: pretty simple. So like it seems pretty simple, but wait,

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Speaker 1: there's more, uh there? Yeah, I mean, these things have

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Speaker 1: come a very long way as technology has advanced up,

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Speaker 1: motors have advanced. Motors started existing, like like, electricity wasn't

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Speaker 1: really a thing when tube started up. Computers happened, right,

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Speaker 1: And actually you might think, well, computers would end up,

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Speaker 1: you know, making the whole purpose of these things obsolete,

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Speaker 1: but that's not the case. In fact, there's still very

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Speaker 1: high tech pneumatic tube systems that are at play in

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Speaker 1: various locations for good reasons. And it turns out that

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Speaker 1: the computers aren't necessary elements in that in order to

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Speaker 1: be kind of like traffic control. So it's kind of

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Speaker 1: cool that this thing that we would normally think was

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Speaker 1: replaced by computers is actually complementing them in specific use cases. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: if you want to send a message to your friend

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Speaker 1: across town, you're more likely to either drop a letter

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Speaker 1: in the mail or much more likely to send the

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Speaker 1: message Kingdom on face. But there are many important uses

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Speaker 1: for pneumatic tubes. Um. We will get into many of

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Speaker 1: those later. First, let us talk specifically about how pneumatic

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Speaker 1: tubes work. Yeah, let's talk about the physics what is

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Speaker 1: going on with a pneumatic tube? And so walk me

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Speaker 1: through the you wrote. You've you've described an excellent way

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Speaker 1: of thinking through this so that we have a logical

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Speaker 1: progression to get to the actual mechanics of pneumatic tubes. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So pneumatic, in case you don't know, means works via

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Speaker 1: pressurized gas. Basically. Um, So the air around us seems

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Speaker 1: pretty thin, right, but it's actually a soup. It's actually

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Speaker 1: a liquid made up of lightweight atoms and particles like

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Speaker 1: nitrogen and oxygen and argon and carp dioxide and ozone

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Speaker 1: and dust bunnies and et cetera. Yeah, yeah, uh, And

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Speaker 1: that soup is at pretty much a constant density and

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Speaker 1: pressure around us while we're walking around on Earth's surface,

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Speaker 1: though it's a little bit thinner. The further away from

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Speaker 1: sea level you get, right, Right, the higher you climb

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Speaker 1: on a mountain, for example, the less dense the air.

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Speaker 1: Thus you have let lower air pressure at those altitudes. Right,

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Speaker 1: And it's useful to think about that because one great

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Speaker 1: way of thinking about air pressure and how it helps

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Speaker 1: stuff work is by thinking of how your ears pop

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Speaker 1: when you go up in a really tall elevator or

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Speaker 1: or up a mountain, or up in an airplane. Um,

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Speaker 1: And that's because your your ears pop because of the

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Speaker 1: density of the air outside of your body being lower

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Speaker 1: than the density of the air in your ears. Okay,

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Speaker 1: You've got this little tube of air in your in

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Speaker 1: your head called the station tube, and it lets your

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Speaker 1: it lets your ear drum vibrate, which is important for

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Speaker 1: your ear dry to function. Right, That's what allows you

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Speaker 1: to interpret sound right, because sound is a physical uh phenomenon.

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Speaker 1: It vibrates the ear drum, which makes some celia go, well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that signals the brain that exactly. Yeah, we're just gonna

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Speaker 1: re enact once more with feeling line by line. But no,

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Speaker 1: it it does. You know. The ear drum is what

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Speaker 1: ends up causing these other bones in your in your

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Speaker 1: ear to move in such a way that celia inside

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Speaker 1: of this one container, uh start to vibrate fluctuate, and

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Speaker 1: that sends electrical signals to your brain, which then is

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Speaker 1: interpreted as sound. So without that vibration, you don't hear. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And without this tube you wouldn't get that vibration. That

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Speaker 1: would have nothing to vibrate against. It would just be

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Speaker 1: all solid meat and that doesn't vibrate as well. Yeah yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean sound can travel through solids, but it's not

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Speaker 1: as effective going from air to solid then from solid

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Speaker 1: to solid, so you know it's important. So the C

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Speaker 1: station tube is shut off with muscles that are tied

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Speaker 1: into your mouth throat swallowing muscles. This is one of

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Speaker 1: those things I always thought was weird that that our

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Speaker 1: ears are connected to I mean, the human bodies. Gross y'all,

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Speaker 1: especially the sinus type system. Yeah, and that's that's why

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Speaker 1: if you swallow, you hear like a tiny little pop,

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Speaker 1: and that is the muscles of that tube opening up

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Speaker 1: and and letting a fresh supply of air in, which

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Speaker 1: is important because the air that gets into the tube

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Speaker 1: gets absorbed by the walls of the tube, and so

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Speaker 1: it needs to be replenished periodically. That's also why your

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Speaker 1: head hurts so much when when you have a cold,

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Speaker 1: because those muscles get stuffed up by gunk and you

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Speaker 1: can't replenish that air supply and everything hurt. When you're like,

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Speaker 1: I can't hear because I have a cold, it seems

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Speaker 1: because yeah, yeah, that's because the because your ear drum

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Speaker 1: literally cannot vibrate because there's not a replenishment of air

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Speaker 1: in the tube. That's kind of cool. I mean, I

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Speaker 1: had never thought of it that way. So interesting. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so all of this is a sidebar promise. We're getting

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Speaker 1: back to pneumatics. UM. So, so as you gain altitude,

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Speaker 1: the air inside of your ears starts exerting pressure on

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Speaker 1: those membranes. Um, it starts pushing because it's at that

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Speaker 1: higher density than the air outside. Um. You know, it

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Speaker 1: wants to be chill like that lower pressure air, you

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Speaker 1: never let it hang loose. Yeah, when you create this

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Speaker 1: pressure differential than there, that's where you're starting to get

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Speaker 1: that feeling of something's just kind of like you get

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Speaker 1: that ache. You can get pretty painful too, if you

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Speaker 1: especially like you know, you hear about babies and kids

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Speaker 1: having real problems because they haven't figured out how to

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Speaker 1: voluntarily open up their irustration tube. Yeah. And so when

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Speaker 1: the difference in pressure is great enough that you either

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Speaker 1: voluntarily or involuntarily open up that illustration tube, that the

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Speaker 1: sudden release of that pressurized air is pretty forceful and

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Speaker 1: creates that pop. That's when your ears go pop um.

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Speaker 1: But is just one example of pressure at work around us. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This next one that I've got for you is a

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Speaker 1: little bit more technical. Okay are you ready? Yeah? Okay,

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Speaker 1: straws like what the pig built his house out of,

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Speaker 1: drinking straws. Okay, okay, so crazy straws in my case,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, sure, sure, crazy straws totally. So you're not

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Speaker 1: technically pulling liquid up through a straw. You're you're creating

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Speaker 1: an opportunity for the liquid to push itself up. So

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Speaker 1: I'm motivating the liquid. You're motivating the liquid. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: This section that you apply with your mouth creates an

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Speaker 1: area of low pressure at the top of the straw,

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Speaker 1: which means that the relatively high pressure liquid at the

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Speaker 1: bottom of the straw pushes a sip of your drink

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Speaker 1: up into your mouth. Now, this is really interesting to

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Speaker 1: me because I talked about a similar thing with Josh

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Speaker 1: Clark when we covered how toilets work, because we had

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Speaker 1: to talk about siphoning and the siphoning and uses a

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Speaker 1: similar principle and it does quire this difference in pressure

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Speaker 1: as well. So very interesting. So how does this compared

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Speaker 1: to say, pneumatic tubes. Well, it's it's basically the same thing. Um,

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Speaker 1: the the tube part is air tight like a straw,

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Speaker 1: except it has sealable hatches at either end instead of

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Speaker 1: you know straw. Bit's yeah. Um, so so you you

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Speaker 1: put a canister in one hatch. Yeah, it helps a

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Speaker 1: whole lot off. The canister has some kind of like

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Speaker 1: flexible skirts on either end, the concealed the interior edges

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Speaker 1: of the tube that air is not passing around around

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Speaker 1: the canister right to make it the most effective. So

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Speaker 1: you so you put your canister in there, you close

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Speaker 1: the hatch, and you press your go button. Um. Now

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Speaker 1: on the other end of the tube, pressing that button

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Speaker 1: will open up a vent and start a motor. Now,

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Speaker 1: one of two things will happen at this point, right,

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Speaker 1: So this all depends upon where the canister is in

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Speaker 1: relation to where the blower is. Right. So here's the

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Speaker 1: boring one, because because you get to take the really

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Speaker 1: cool one. Here's the boring one if the canister is

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Speaker 1: the blower side. So in other words, this is like

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Speaker 1: the blower being a fan essentially that can either blow

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Speaker 1: air into the tube or pull air out of the

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Speaker 1: tube if it's on the blower side, and the only

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Speaker 1: way to move the canster to the other end of

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Speaker 1: the tube is to blow air against the canister pushing it.

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Speaker 1: So you're increasing the air pressure on the side of

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Speaker 1: the blower and it just blows the canister across. So

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Speaker 1: this is essentially the same as when you shoot blow

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Speaker 1: darts at your coworkers, or when I say you when

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Speaker 1: I shoot blow darts at Ben bowling. Um, he has

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Speaker 1: wondered what that tingling sensation has been, and no one

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Speaker 1: tell him. But that's essentially it yeah, but if the

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Speaker 1: canisters on the opposite side, See the blower on a

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Speaker 1: pneumatic tube system typically is at just one end. You

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Speaker 1: don't have two blowers right right, And it's not um.

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Speaker 1: Especially classically, these things weren't always powerful enough to necessarily

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Speaker 1: push right. So if the canisters on the opposite end,

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Speaker 1: like I, I've sent something out now, I'm expecting it

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Speaker 1: to come back, but my blower is at the the

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Speaker 1: end where I am at, I have to I have

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Speaker 1: to find a different way to move the canster. I

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Speaker 1: can't push it by by turning the fan to blow

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Speaker 1: air into the tube. So what do I do? Then, Well,

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Speaker 1: the motor will still drive a fan down at the

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Speaker 1: other end of the tube, but but this time it

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Speaker 1: will start to pull air out of the tube, venting

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Speaker 1: it out of the tube entirely. Gotcha. Okay, this section,

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Speaker 1: just like a straw, creates a partial vacuum at that

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Speaker 1: end of the tube with the fan an area of

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Speaker 1: low pressure. So uh, you know, down down at the

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Speaker 1: canister end of the tube, the higher pressure air behind

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Speaker 1: the canister wants to expand to settle the difference, right, um,

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Speaker 1: so it will push the canister through the tube. So

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Speaker 1: the canstor is still being pushed. It's just that it's

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Speaker 1: being pushed because the air behind it is at a

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Speaker 1: higher pressure than the air in front of it, exactly.

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Speaker 1: It's so cool. So in most of these systems, when

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Speaker 1: the canister reaches its destination um like the end of

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Speaker 1: the tube, it will trigger a trapdoor to close behind it,

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Speaker 1: which will also cue the motor to turn off end

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Speaker 1: the vnced close, meaning that the partial vacuum that's been

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Speaker 1: created in the tube will be broken, and your buddy

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Speaker 1: at the other end can open up the hatch and

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Speaker 1: take out the canister. And that makes perfect sense because

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Speaker 1: obviously if you had continue to have that vacuum they're

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Speaker 1: opening up the hatch would have been difficult, it real hard, yeah,

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Speaker 1: because that that air pressure on the outside of the

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Speaker 1: tube is pushing against it. You know. It's this same

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Speaker 1: sort of deal. That's just one of those things that

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Speaker 1: you have to have all the lower parts in place

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Speaker 1: for the system to work properly. And the big advantage

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Speaker 1: of this sort of system is that you don't have

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Speaker 1: to connect little motors to all those canisters, right. The

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Speaker 1: individual units don't need anything, they don't need any moving parts. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the whole. The system is a whole can have a

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Speaker 1: single well, it can have a single motor. A lot

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Speaker 1: of the time these days, they've got really complex multiple

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Speaker 1: motor things that's going on, especially if you have like

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Speaker 1: lots of potential destination systems. But but if you had

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Speaker 1: a very simple system where it was just an out

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Speaker 1: and back, you would just need one one motor turning

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Speaker 1: one fan or or you know, some people just refer

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Speaker 1: to him as air compressors, but technically you're using a

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Speaker 1: fan anything fan. Yeah. So yeah, that's really interesting. And

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Speaker 1: they are also some interesting advantages or rather design elements

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Speaker 1: that have been made to make sure that the canisters

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Speaker 1: arrived safely, because in the original systems, canisters would arrive

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Speaker 1: by basically just crashing into the opposite end of the two. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they and they could be going pretty darn fast, depending

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Speaker 1: on how powerful that fan was. Yeah, tens of miles

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Speaker 1: an hour, which which I mean usually I say is

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Speaker 1: kind of a joke, but actually that's pretty quick. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: especially for something like if you haven't designed it just right,

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Speaker 1: it's gonna you know, just just smash it up, yeah,

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Speaker 1: or it's gonna end up causing damage to the tubes,

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Speaker 1: and obviously that's a problem. So there are a couple

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Speaker 1: of different ways of slowing them down properly. One of

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Speaker 1: those uses air brakes, which is essentially just again pressurized air,

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Speaker 1: but now on the low pressure side, so that can

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Speaker 1: slow down the canister from you know, it's it's inevitable

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Speaker 1: crash towards oblivion, or bumpers like little rubber bumpers that

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Speaker 1: can come out from the sides to slow like the

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Speaker 1: way a lot of roller coaster brakes work. Huh. And

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Speaker 1: also they often have some form of switch that once

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Speaker 1: a canister passes that switch, it activates it, which then

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Speaker 1: turns off power to the blower. Uh. Now, momentum still

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Speaker 1: a thing, so you have to plan for that as well.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, it's sort of like the trapdoor idea,

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Speaker 1: but with a little bit of a longer glide after

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Speaker 1: the trapdoor. Right. So now I'm going to try and

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Speaker 1: explain without the use of visual aids, how how a

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Speaker 1: simple pneumatic tube system using a couple of valves and

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Speaker 1: a switch would help a canister come to a stop.

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Speaker 1: All right, So you've got with the two valves, these

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Speaker 1: create a pathway for air in front of the caster

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Speaker 1: to vent out for most of the trip, while leaving

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Speaker 1: enough for the very end to act as a cushion. So,

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Speaker 1: in other words, you need a way for air to

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Speaker 1: vent outward or else you'll never create that area of

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Speaker 1: low pressure. But you need a way to keep a

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Speaker 1: little bit of air in there so that it can

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Speaker 1: act as a breaking system. So you've got to figure

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Speaker 1: out how to do that. And when I saw there

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Speaker 1: was a a series of illustrations I saw online that

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Speaker 1: explained this really well. And uh so I'm going to

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Speaker 1: try and walk you through it the best way I

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Speaker 1: know how. So we're playing Dungeons and Dragons, y'all. And

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Speaker 1: here's here's what's happening. So your adventurer is in a

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Speaker 1: tunnel and behind you as a giant spinning fan of death.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think I've been on this module before. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So in this case, the giant spinning fan of death

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Speaker 1: is currently slow. It's it's actually not even moving at all.

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Speaker 1: It's it's no one's trip that trap. Yet you start

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Speaker 1: walking down the tunnel. So the van is behind you

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Speaker 1: and you just have a big expansive tunnel in front

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Speaker 1: of you. Now, as you walk down the tunnel, you

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Speaker 1: see that there is a split from the tunnel off

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Speaker 1: let's say to your left, and it's just a second,

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Speaker 1: smaller tunnel that you see down the door. No, no, no,

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Speaker 1: there's no door. It's just just an open it's just

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Speaker 1: an opening. But but I like your initiative. You didn't

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Speaker 1: even have to roll for it, all right. But you

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Speaker 1: continue on down and you come to your first actual

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Speaker 1: door in that main tunnel. Now you can do your kicking,

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Speaker 1: and it works because that door will only open outward

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Speaker 1: into the main hall. This is a valve, and it's

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Speaker 1: a one way valve, right, so air can go from

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Speaker 1: the fan through the main pipe, but it can't be

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Speaker 1: sucked back this way, got it? So if airs, if

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Speaker 1: airs being pulled, that door slam shut and nothing, not

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Speaker 1: even your mighty kick will open it. So since there

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00:16:55,400 --> 00:16:58,000
Speaker 1: are no differentials in air pressure, your kick opens the door.

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Speaker 1: You continue down the hall. I gonna skip the cobalt encounter.

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Speaker 1: As you continue down the tunnel, you see a door

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Speaker 1: on your left. Now, this door is the other valve.

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Speaker 1: This is the valve that is the bypass valve. And

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Speaker 1: in fact, if you were to kick down that door,

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Speaker 1: but you can do oh ah, yeah, I kicked down

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Speaker 1: the door. Excellent, So the door opens inward into that

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Speaker 1: secondary tunnel. There's no bug bears. There is an al bear,

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Speaker 1: but he's currently on break. So you kick down the door. UH.

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Speaker 1: That opens the pathway to the bypass UH top tube

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Speaker 1: or bypass pipe. So the first tunnel that you passed

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Speaker 1: way back when on the left, it's the same, it's

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Speaker 1: that same pathway. So this door will only open when

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Speaker 1: air is being pulled through back toward the fan, so

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Speaker 1: sucked back toward the fan. So that way, you always

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Speaker 1: have one valve that's open and one valve that's closed,

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Speaker 1: and it all depends upon air flows, so there's no

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Speaker 1: mechanical or electrical need to to change these valves. It's

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Speaker 1: just the airflow that does it automatically. So if the

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Speaker 1: air flow is being pulled back, the bypass valve is open,

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Speaker 1: the main valve is shut, and because the bypass pipe

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00:18:10,520 --> 00:18:14,200
Speaker 1: completely bypasses that main valve, air can still flow through.

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Speaker 1: So now we're going to have to use a an

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00:18:18,160 --> 00:18:22,240
Speaker 1: example to talk about what happens when the canister comes by.

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Speaker 1: So the canister starts rocketing down the path toward the

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Speaker 1: fan side, so air is being pulled through, it ends

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Speaker 1: up passing a switch. That switch tells the fan to

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00:18:33,240 --> 00:18:35,399
Speaker 1: stop blowing by. Of course that's going to take a

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00:18:35,400 --> 00:18:38,640
Speaker 1: little time, So the cancer continues down towards the pathway.

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00:18:39,480 --> 00:18:44,120
Speaker 1: The canister ends up passing that bypass valve, which is open.

336
00:18:44,760 --> 00:18:48,080
Speaker 1: So once the canister is cleared the bypass valve, because

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00:18:48,200 --> 00:18:50,680
Speaker 1: you have an air tight seal between the main valve

338
00:18:50,760 --> 00:18:54,399
Speaker 1: and the canister, that air between the two starts to

339
00:18:54,480 --> 00:18:58,040
Speaker 1: get compressed, and that compressed air begins to push back

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00:18:58,119 --> 00:19:00,800
Speaker 1: against the canister, slowing it down, and thus you have

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00:19:00,960 --> 00:19:03,879
Speaker 1: air brakes. That was a long way to go over

342
00:19:03,960 --> 00:19:07,240
Speaker 1: that explanation, but honestly, without the use of visual aids,

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00:19:07,320 --> 00:19:10,399
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure how it is going to explain how

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00:19:10,520 --> 00:19:13,479
Speaker 1: this actually works in a way that would remotely make sense. Uh,

345
00:19:14,320 --> 00:19:17,159
Speaker 1: you now get two d and thirty gold pieces a

346
00:19:17,240 --> 00:19:22,000
Speaker 1: piece and the princess is in another castle. Okay, okay, well,

347
00:19:22,080 --> 00:19:25,800
Speaker 1: good adventure than You're welcome. I'm a level three game

348
00:19:25,840 --> 00:19:29,800
Speaker 1: mess thro um. Yeah. So obviously, if the if the

349
00:19:29,840 --> 00:19:31,840
Speaker 1: fan were switched the other way, where the canstor is

350
00:19:31,880 --> 00:19:35,520
Speaker 1: blowing down the the pipe, the main valve would be opened.

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00:19:35,520 --> 00:19:38,280
Speaker 1: The bypass valve would be shut, and that would be

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00:19:38,359 --> 00:19:41,680
Speaker 1: it there would it would be no different otherwise. Uh So, yeah,

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00:19:41,840 --> 00:19:44,560
Speaker 1: that's that's the basic way that this works. And that's

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00:19:44,720 --> 00:19:50,640
Speaker 1: you know, that's a very very very simple versions, as

355
00:19:50,720 --> 00:19:54,200
Speaker 1: complicated as that just sounded out loud, that that is

356
00:19:54,480 --> 00:19:59,120
Speaker 1: as basic as it gets. Really. Yeah, Jonathan from two

357
00:19:59,240 --> 00:20:01,159
Speaker 1: coming in here. We're going to have more from this

358
00:20:01,280 --> 00:20:16,080
Speaker 1: classic episode after this quick break. You know, I said

359
00:20:16,080 --> 00:20:18,160
Speaker 1: a while ago that these things have been around since

360
00:20:18,200 --> 00:20:21,200
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties at least. So let us go to

361
00:20:21,320 --> 00:20:24,920
Speaker 1: the way back machine. It's been out of use for

362
00:20:25,080 --> 00:20:35,720
Speaker 1: so long. Kind of dusty in here, this little Yeah,

363
00:20:35,960 --> 00:20:39,200
Speaker 1: you know what, as as as cramped as this thing is,

364
00:20:39,480 --> 00:20:43,119
Speaker 1: it's still cooler than Josh and Chuck Studio. I mean,

365
00:20:43,240 --> 00:20:46,360
Speaker 1: not not like in a style sense, I mean physically

366
00:20:46,440 --> 00:20:50,359
Speaker 1: the temperature is lower. Physically Yeah, cooler, Yeah, yeah that No,

367
00:20:50,520 --> 00:20:53,439
Speaker 1: they they're they're pretty hot, yeah they are. They're there

368
00:20:53,520 --> 00:20:55,880
Speaker 1: a couple of hot guys. All right, Well, anyway, let's

369
00:20:55,920 --> 00:21:01,600
Speaker 1: just where are we setting this to, uh too, to Greece? Sure, well, okay,

370
00:21:02,040 --> 00:21:06,400
Speaker 1: like ancient Greece, modern Greece. Okay, I was really hoping

371
00:21:06,440 --> 00:21:08,240
Speaker 1: you were going to say Greece too, but okay, to

372
00:21:08,720 --> 00:21:13,119
Speaker 1: Greece it is here we go. Well, we do have

373
00:21:13,280 --> 00:21:16,520
Speaker 1: chills and they are multiplying. But that was Greece one.

374
00:21:16,520 --> 00:21:22,359
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I don't want to it's it says a

375
00:21:22,400 --> 00:21:24,879
Speaker 1: lot for you and little for me. So there was

376
00:21:24,960 --> 00:21:28,400
Speaker 1: a mathematician who started writing about the concept of using

377
00:21:28,440 --> 00:21:31,800
Speaker 1: pressurized guests to produce mechanical motion. I know this guy, Yeah,

378
00:21:32,080 --> 00:21:37,280
Speaker 1: Haro of Alexandria, also known as Heron. He's a pretty

379
00:21:37,320 --> 00:21:39,840
Speaker 1: smart dude. Was he was? Did you you know? We

380
00:21:39,920 --> 00:21:41,720
Speaker 1: talked about it. He is. Since we are here in

381
00:21:41,760 --> 00:21:44,800
Speaker 1: the way back missions and he's across the street over there,

382
00:21:45,240 --> 00:21:47,360
Speaker 1: he's kind of working on something else right now, Yeah,

383
00:21:47,440 --> 00:21:49,560
Speaker 1: I think we're weirding him out by looking at him. Maybe. Okay,

384
00:21:49,560 --> 00:21:53,640
Speaker 1: well let's just act casual, all right. So something else

385
00:21:53,680 --> 00:21:55,800
Speaker 1: that he was really known for, by the way, he

386
00:21:55,920 --> 00:21:58,960
Speaker 1: was known for working with steam engines, in fact, pressurized gas.

387
00:21:59,040 --> 00:22:02,520
Speaker 1: It makes sense, right, it's related. He noticed that air

388
00:22:03,240 --> 00:22:07,480
Speaker 1: had the ability to physically push against things, and that

389
00:22:07,560 --> 00:22:11,520
Speaker 1: if you had a way of generating air movement, you know.

390
00:22:11,640 --> 00:22:14,360
Speaker 1: He even thought, oh, air must be made of something

391
00:22:14,440 --> 00:22:17,879
Speaker 1: because it can have a force. So very forward thinking.

392
00:22:18,320 --> 00:22:20,440
Speaker 1: He didn't have the words to describe this in the

393
00:22:20,520 --> 00:22:23,399
Speaker 1: way that we do today, but he understood that this

394
00:22:23,520 --> 00:22:25,080
Speaker 1: had a way of doing work, and that if you

395
00:22:25,080 --> 00:22:27,359
Speaker 1: could find a way to channel that, you can make

396
00:22:27,480 --> 00:22:29,320
Speaker 1: air do work for you. And that gave him a

397
00:22:29,359 --> 00:22:32,560
Speaker 1: lot of thought about steam, including one of my favorite

398
00:22:32,800 --> 00:22:37,080
Speaker 1: proposed inventions. There's no record of it actually existing, and

399
00:22:37,440 --> 00:22:39,480
Speaker 1: I think we I think we talked about this one

400
00:22:39,600 --> 00:22:42,120
Speaker 1: in our episode about steam engines. Yeah, I'm pretty sure

401
00:22:42,200 --> 00:22:45,679
Speaker 1: we did. This is the magical way to open temple doors.

402
00:22:46,400 --> 00:22:49,399
Speaker 1: And so you start with a flaming brazure, which is

403
00:22:49,480 --> 00:22:55,320
Speaker 1: a container that contains hot coals, essentially, and you have

404
00:22:55,520 --> 00:22:59,560
Speaker 1: that connected to a boiler. The boiler boils water, water

405
00:23:00,040 --> 00:23:02,320
Speaker 1: is converted into steam. That steam goes through a long

406
00:23:02,440 --> 00:23:06,080
Speaker 1: tube that's essentially a condenser tube. It condenses back into

407
00:23:06,119 --> 00:23:09,040
Speaker 1: water and starts dripping into a bucket. When enough of

408
00:23:09,119 --> 00:23:11,680
Speaker 1: water has dripped into that bucket, that bucket, which is

409
00:23:11,720 --> 00:23:15,480
Speaker 1: suspended by a rope from a pulley, starts to get

410
00:23:15,520 --> 00:23:19,440
Speaker 1: heavier and heavier, pulling downward, and that pulley system ends

411
00:23:19,520 --> 00:23:21,920
Speaker 1: up turning a couple of columns that open up the

412
00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:26,640
Speaker 1: temple doors. So by lighting a fire and and sacrificing

413
00:23:26,800 --> 00:23:33,080
Speaker 1: something to the gods, eventually the doors open and it's magic. Uh,

414
00:23:33,200 --> 00:23:35,639
Speaker 1: it was pretty brilliant. He's he actually came up with

415
00:23:35,680 --> 00:23:39,280
Speaker 1: a lot of different really cool ideas. Um and so

416
00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:41,960
Speaker 1: you know, we definitely wanted to call him out. But

417
00:23:42,160 --> 00:23:44,840
Speaker 1: then we have to skip ahead a couple of you know,

418
00:23:44,960 --> 00:23:47,600
Speaker 1: like a millennia or two. You know. Oh yeah, you know,

419
00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:49,560
Speaker 1: you know how it goes with science stirring some of

420
00:23:49,640 --> 00:23:53,600
Speaker 1: those intervening years between. Yeah, tell him increase and say

421
00:23:53,720 --> 00:23:57,920
Speaker 1: that the Renaissance, you know, back when everyone suddenly said, hey,

422
00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:00,600
Speaker 1: remember when we used to be smart. He liked that.

423
00:24:01,720 --> 00:24:03,560
Speaker 1: It was great. You know, we were a lot a

424
00:24:03,640 --> 00:24:05,960
Speaker 1: lot fewer of us were dying of the plague back then.

425
00:24:06,160 --> 00:24:09,040
Speaker 1: We liked that time. That was good. Yeah. So a

426
00:24:09,160 --> 00:24:11,720
Speaker 1: fellow by the name of Dennis Poppin, I think that's

427
00:24:11,760 --> 00:24:15,000
Speaker 1: how you said, that, would present a paper on an

428
00:24:15,040 --> 00:24:18,000
Speaker 1: invention that he or an idea that he was calling

429
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:21,439
Speaker 1: the double pneumatic pump to the Royal Society of London.

430
00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:25,080
Speaker 1: That's pretty, that's pretty. That's a pretty impressive name, the

431
00:24:25,200 --> 00:24:28,280
Speaker 1: double new double pneumatic. It's twice as good as it

432
00:24:28,359 --> 00:24:32,000
Speaker 1: is clearly obviously um, but nothing more would come of

433
00:24:32,119 --> 00:24:35,840
Speaker 1: this until the early nineteenth century. Yeah, that's when there

434
00:24:35,920 --> 00:24:38,720
Speaker 1: was a Scottish engineer by the name of William Murdoch.

435
00:24:39,640 --> 00:24:42,359
Speaker 1: I have to mention William Murdock because while while he

436
00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:45,800
Speaker 1: had essentially invented the pneumatic tube, he didn't do a

437
00:24:45,920 --> 00:24:48,840
Speaker 1: whole lot with it. It was some of his I

438
00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:51,680
Speaker 1: hesitated to use the word like students because they weren't

439
00:24:51,680 --> 00:24:53,680
Speaker 1: even apprentice to him. But people who worked within the

440
00:24:53,760 --> 00:24:57,080
Speaker 1: same field, who were exposed to his ideas were able

441
00:24:57,119 --> 00:24:59,880
Speaker 1: to actually implement them. But he was the one who

442
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:02,600
Speaker 1: came up with the concept of using a pneumatic tube

443
00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:05,119
Speaker 1: in the early nineteenth century, and others would take that

444
00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:09,600
Speaker 1: idea and run with it. Uh Yeah, namely one British

445
00:25:09,640 --> 00:25:12,800
Speaker 1: engineered by the name of George Medhurst. He would publish

446
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:17,520
Speaker 1: a plan in eighteen ten for a pneumatic transport system. Now,

447
00:25:18,320 --> 00:25:20,280
Speaker 1: let me ask you, is this the one where you like,

448
00:25:20,359 --> 00:25:22,120
Speaker 1: you get in the tube and you press a button

449
00:25:22,119 --> 00:25:24,320
Speaker 1: and then you just fly across. So it's not like

450
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:27,720
Speaker 1: in futurama. I know now that would hurt a lot.

451
00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:31,879
Speaker 1: I don't recommend it. Yeah, Well, Okay, so they're downsides.

452
00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:34,240
Speaker 1: I mean, clearly you really need that air brake system

453
00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:36,720
Speaker 1: to work really well, and your ears would pop like

454
00:25:36,760 --> 00:25:42,360
Speaker 1: a mother. True. Yeah, being being being subjected to extremely

455
00:25:42,440 --> 00:25:44,879
Speaker 1: low pressure on one half of your body might not

456
00:25:45,119 --> 00:25:48,040
Speaker 1: have the best effect overall. All right, fair enough, Okay,

457
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 1: So so he was so he was working with a

458
00:25:52,080 --> 00:25:55,600
Speaker 1: compressed air. Yeah, he actually created as something called the

459
00:25:55,720 --> 00:26:00,280
Speaker 1: Aeolien engine in eight hundred, which was a kind of

460
00:26:00,359 --> 00:26:02,960
Speaker 1: like a car running on a compressed air in a way,

461
00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:04,920
Speaker 1: it was a vehicle that used compressed air on the

462
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,280
Speaker 1: vehicle itself to create a system of propulsion to make

463
00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:13,200
Speaker 1: the vehicle move. So in this case, the the you know,

464
00:26:13,280 --> 00:26:14,760
Speaker 1: like we said with the pneumatic tube is one of

465
00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:18,119
Speaker 1: the big advantages is that you have the centralized source

466
00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:20,600
Speaker 1: of power. This was the other way around. This is

467
00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:24,480
Speaker 1: more like more akin to a motor vehicle. So but

468
00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:26,680
Speaker 1: he that was an early experiment of his that didn't

469
00:26:26,760 --> 00:26:30,480
Speaker 1: necessarily work out, you know, as like this is going

470
00:26:30,560 --> 00:26:33,359
Speaker 1: to be the new means of transportation. But he was

471
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:37,200
Speaker 1: recognizing the power of compressed air. So then he moved

472
00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:40,879
Speaker 1: on to create a design for this pneumatic transport system

473
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:43,880
Speaker 1: and it consisted of an iron tube that was six

474
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:45,919
Speaker 1: ft high by six ft wide, which is about one

475
00:26:45,960 --> 00:26:49,119
Speaker 1: point eight meters each. And I had rails along the

476
00:26:49,160 --> 00:26:52,080
Speaker 1: bottom of this tube, so cars would be set on

477
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 1: the rails and then blown through the tubes using compressed air.

478
00:26:55,880 --> 00:26:58,440
Speaker 1: So essentially the style that we were talking about the

479
00:26:58,560 --> 00:27:02,000
Speaker 1: the the easy, more worring method of getting canisters from

480
00:27:02,040 --> 00:27:05,200
Speaker 1: point A to point B. But he did he did

481
00:27:05,359 --> 00:27:08,800
Speaker 1: note that he did the math and suessed it out,

482
00:27:08,880 --> 00:27:11,320
Speaker 1: and and thought that if air could be subjected to

483
00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:15,280
Speaker 1: just forty pounds per square inch of pressure, just um,

484
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:18,000
Speaker 1: it's it's about two and a half times the amount

485
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:22,199
Speaker 1: that the atmosphere exerts upon us right now hanging out

486
00:27:22,240 --> 00:27:25,160
Speaker 1: at sea level. Um. If we could increase that two

487
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:27,560
Speaker 1: and a half times, that air molecules could be propelled

488
00:27:27,960 --> 00:27:33,640
Speaker 1: at like a thousand miles an hour or a thousand,

489
00:27:34,320 --> 00:27:39,800
Speaker 1: six hundred and nine kilometers, You're welcome, Canada and else.

490
00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 1: Uh when actually pushing stuff that is an air, that

491
00:27:44,200 --> 00:27:46,119
Speaker 1: speed would only be about a hundred miles or a

492
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:50,160
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty kilometers per hour, which it's still pretty fast.

493
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:56,680
Speaker 1: Certainly in eighteen ten was not too shabby. It's now No,

494
00:27:56,840 --> 00:27:59,720
Speaker 1: Unfortunately he would pass away before he really had a

495
00:27:59,800 --> 00:28:03,480
Speaker 1: chance to implement any of these ideas, but his ideas

496
00:28:03,520 --> 00:28:10,200
Speaker 1: would become instrumental for people who were working on actual implementations, right. Yeah.

497
00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:14,240
Speaker 1: So uh, one of the one of the interesting stories

498
00:28:14,280 --> 00:28:16,720
Speaker 1: I came across, and I was telling Lauren before we

499
00:28:16,800 --> 00:28:20,119
Speaker 1: went into the podcast studio that this, the stories of

500
00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:24,360
Speaker 1: these people probably couldn't merit a couple of episodes. Maybe

501
00:28:24,440 --> 00:28:27,359
Speaker 1: I'll mention it to Stuffy miss in history because because

502
00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:29,879
Speaker 1: it really fits more in their line than ours. But

503
00:28:31,160 --> 00:28:33,800
Speaker 1: I want to talk about Simuda and Clegg. So you

504
00:28:33,920 --> 00:28:36,240
Speaker 1: had the Simuda Brothers. That was a company that was

505
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:40,240
Speaker 1: run by Jacob and Joseph Simuda who were primarily shipbuilders,

506
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:44,280
Speaker 1: so they were engineers, but they built ships. Then they

507
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:48,000
Speaker 1: partnered with another inventor and engineer named Samuel Clegg, who

508
00:28:48,040 --> 00:28:50,040
Speaker 1: at one time and worked in a company that used

509
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:53,640
Speaker 1: a lot of William Murdock's inventions. So Clegg had been

510
00:28:53,760 --> 00:28:56,959
Speaker 1: exposed to Murdock's ideas. Some people refer to him as

511
00:28:57,080 --> 00:29:00,239
Speaker 1: as as Murdoch's student, although from all the research I did,

512
00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:03,320
Speaker 1: it didn't seem like they had a very like each other. Yeah,

513
00:29:03,400 --> 00:29:05,760
Speaker 1: it's kind of like saying Tesla worked for Edison in

514
00:29:05,840 --> 00:29:09,000
Speaker 1: the sense that, yes, Tesla worked for one of Edison's companies,

515
00:29:09,120 --> 00:29:12,280
Speaker 1: but was not like directly associated with most of his

516
00:29:12,360 --> 00:29:14,760
Speaker 1: life for coffee with the dude. No, especially by the

517
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:17,360
Speaker 1: time they ended up being kind of rivals. But but

518
00:29:17,440 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: even in the early days they didn't. It's not like

519
00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:23,760
Speaker 1: Edison knew everybody to work for him anyway. So their

520
00:29:23,800 --> 00:29:28,320
Speaker 1: their idea was to lease some already constructed but unopened

521
00:29:28,480 --> 00:29:31,240
Speaker 1: rail lines. So the idea was they took some rail

522
00:29:31,280 --> 00:29:33,120
Speaker 1: lines that had not yet been open to the public.

523
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:36,280
Speaker 1: They had been built but not used, and they were

524
00:29:36,320 --> 00:29:39,200
Speaker 1: at a place called Wormholt Scrubs, at least that's what

525
00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 1: was known by at the time. It is now known

526
00:29:42,000 --> 00:29:47,080
Speaker 1: as Wormwood Scrubs. Two bees instead of one, yeah uh.

527
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:50,800
Speaker 1: And they used a pipe set between the two rails

528
00:29:51,520 --> 00:29:55,720
Speaker 1: as their pneumatic system. So instead of an entire huge

529
00:29:55,720 --> 00:30:00,320
Speaker 1: pneumatic tube encompassing the rails, there was a smaller matic

530
00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:03,200
Speaker 1: tube set right in the middle of the rails, and

531
00:30:04,080 --> 00:30:07,320
Speaker 1: the tube had a slot running all the way the

532
00:30:07,480 --> 00:30:10,600
Speaker 1: length of the tube at the top of it. All right,

533
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:13,880
Speaker 1: So you're they had a train car that had a

534
00:30:14,080 --> 00:30:18,600
Speaker 1: pole that essentially extended down into that slot and was

535
00:30:18,680 --> 00:30:22,760
Speaker 1: attached at the other end inside the tube to a piston. Okay,

536
00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:25,920
Speaker 1: so this is like a pneumatic monorail. Yeah exactly. The

537
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:30,120
Speaker 1: piston acted like a canister would in a normal pneumatic tube.

538
00:30:30,520 --> 00:30:32,719
Speaker 1: And then you sit there and think like, well, how

539
00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:34,719
Speaker 1: do you create the difference in pressure if you've got

540
00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:36,600
Speaker 1: to if you've got a slot all the way across

541
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:41,040
Speaker 1: the open top of this two, Yeah, there's no there's

542
00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:42,480
Speaker 1: no way to seal it. So what they did was

543
00:30:42,520 --> 00:30:46,920
Speaker 1: they created a leather flap that would essentially be opened

544
00:30:47,080 --> 00:30:51,080
Speaker 1: immediately before and close immediately after the the rod would

545
00:30:51,120 --> 00:30:55,800
Speaker 1: pass through. And uh, the the track they were using

546
00:30:55,920 --> 00:30:59,000
Speaker 1: was on a very gentle slope, and so what they

547
00:30:59,040 --> 00:31:02,360
Speaker 1: did was they used air to push the train car

548
00:31:02,560 --> 00:31:05,680
Speaker 1: up the slope to its destination, and then on the

549
00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:09,000
Speaker 1: return trip they just allowed gravity to bring the car back,

550
00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:12,160
Speaker 1: so you didn't have to have any sort of power

551
00:31:12,280 --> 00:31:16,480
Speaker 1: to bring back the car um and it was used

552
00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:22,440
Speaker 1: pretty extensively as kind of a demonstration. Uh, this sort

553
00:31:22,480 --> 00:31:25,920
Speaker 1: of this kind of track was started to get a name,

554
00:31:26,040 --> 00:31:31,000
Speaker 1: is called atmospheric railways. That's beautiful. Yeah, the reason they

555
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:33,680
Speaker 1: wanted to call it atmospheric, was that, yes, they're using

556
00:31:34,000 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 1: they're using pressurized air, but the cars themselves can be

557
00:31:37,720 --> 00:31:40,920
Speaker 1: open to the air, so you're not forced inside a

558
00:31:41,000 --> 00:31:43,960
Speaker 1: tunnel because a lot of people were worried about getting

559
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:48,320
Speaker 1: you know, claustrophobic. Yeah, you know, not all of us

560
00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:53,360
Speaker 1: do well in tunnels. Um, they can be certainly. So

561
00:31:53,520 --> 00:31:58,360
Speaker 1: other atmospheric railways would follow, including some built by Isambard

562
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 1: Kingdom Brunel, who we talked about on tech stuff in

563
00:32:02,280 --> 00:32:05,800
Speaker 1: How Subways Work. That was the seven episode. So he

564
00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:07,840
Speaker 1: was famous for a lot of reasons, one of them

565
00:32:07,880 --> 00:32:12,360
Speaker 1: being that he dug the Thames Tunnel, so he really

566
00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:17,560
Speaker 1: um kind of pioneered the methodology for digging tunnels safely,

567
00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:21,360
Speaker 1: especially under you know, ground that you would technically think

568
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:23,960
Speaker 1: would be really unstable like the bottom of a river.

569
00:32:24,760 --> 00:32:28,640
Speaker 1: Um and one of his trains, at least from a

570
00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: report I read during a demonstration, hit a top speed

571
00:32:32,040 --> 00:32:34,360
Speaker 1: of seventy miles per hour, which is about a hundred

572
00:32:34,400 --> 00:32:40,040
Speaker 1: thirteen kilometers per hour. But keeping that seal effective even

573
00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:45,040
Speaker 1: with those leather flaps was problematic, and so eventually because

574
00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 1: of these issues, the fact that you had to replace

575
00:32:46,960 --> 00:32:51,360
Speaker 1: that seal often uh ended up meaning that when steam

576
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:55,040
Speaker 1: engines really started to become popular, the pneumatic train systems

577
00:32:55,080 --> 00:32:58,360
Speaker 1: like these couldn't compete, and so people just started to

578
00:32:58,360 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 1: go with steam engines that were seen as more reliable

579
00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:06,840
Speaker 1: than something that you had to constantly maintain. So ultimately, um,

580
00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:10,400
Speaker 1: they I was gonna say these didn't go anywhere, but

581
00:33:10,480 --> 00:33:14,120
Speaker 1: that's not true. They'd go from one place to another place.

582
00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:18,600
Speaker 1: Sure they went places, yeah, but they just didn't take off. No. No,

583
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:24,160
Speaker 1: they literally did not take that literally and figuratively both. Yes. Two,

584
00:33:24,280 --> 00:33:26,760
Speaker 1: Jonathan Again, we're gonna take another quick break and be

585
00:33:26,920 --> 00:33:38,160
Speaker 1: back with more. In the fifties, telegraph systems began to

586
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:41,760
Speaker 1: really boom um, which I mentioned A for reference and

587
00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 1: B because if it's important to note that in these

588
00:33:45,080 --> 00:33:47,800
Speaker 1: early days of telegraphs, you know, they it was really

589
00:33:47,840 --> 00:33:54,600
Speaker 1: cool technology, um, but they were really understaffed uh telegraph

590
00:33:54,680 --> 00:33:57,960
Speaker 1: telegraph offices, you know, because there was so much demand

591
00:33:58,280 --> 00:34:01,080
Speaker 1: and most people in businesses couldn't afford to have their

592
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:05,200
Speaker 1: own telegraph machine. So central offices would send these message

593
00:34:05,240 --> 00:34:07,760
Speaker 1: boys on foot through busy city blocks carrying all of

594
00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 1: these telegrams, which would kind of negate depending on you know,

595
00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:16,280
Speaker 1: like like peak capacity, the speed of of a telegraph

596
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:18,480
Speaker 1: versus a mail system. The idea of being, hey, I

597
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 1: can send this message instantly, except I'm sending it instantly

598
00:34:21,600 --> 00:34:25,000
Speaker 1: to a centralized point and then from there where someone

599
00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:27,440
Speaker 1: else could has to run it out to you anyway.

600
00:34:28,040 --> 00:34:31,880
Speaker 1: So in eighteen fifty three Latimer Clark would build a

601
00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:36,480
Speaker 1: non electric pneumatic tube that would carry messages between the

602
00:34:36,640 --> 00:34:40,960
Speaker 1: electric and international telegraph companies headquarters and their offices at

603
00:34:41,160 --> 00:34:45,680
Speaker 1: the British Stock Exchange. Uh. And yes, a lot of

604
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:48,719
Speaker 1: telegraphs were stock related. As we have talked about on

605
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:54,279
Speaker 1: the show before. H Stock exchanges kind of drive message technology.

606
00:34:54,680 --> 00:34:57,120
Speaker 1: It's crazy, the idea that you want to pounce on

607
00:34:57,320 --> 00:35:00,320
Speaker 1: something as soon as possible, whether that's buying or selling.

608
00:35:01,080 --> 00:35:03,600
Speaker 1: So it makes sense that they were really working to

609
00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:06,840
Speaker 1: try and decrease the amount of time between a decision

610
00:35:06,960 --> 00:35:11,800
Speaker 1: and when it can be acted upon. Um So his tubes,

611
00:35:11,880 --> 00:35:17,040
Speaker 1: Latimer Lattimer Clark's tubes were only one way. Most most

612
00:35:17,160 --> 00:35:20,600
Speaker 1: tubes up to this point were so. In other words,

613
00:35:20,719 --> 00:35:22,360
Speaker 1: once it got to its destination, it had to be

614
00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:27,720
Speaker 1: carried back physically to wherever the first office and around

615
00:35:27,800 --> 00:35:31,399
Speaker 1: the same time, the Great Britain General Post Office would

616
00:35:31,480 --> 00:35:35,800
Speaker 1: commission a study of Medhurst's ideas to try to to

617
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:40,839
Speaker 1: get some kind of larger postal tube system, right, something

618
00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:45,120
Speaker 1: that could make the delivery of letters more efficient. Yeah,

619
00:35:45,120 --> 00:35:47,640
Speaker 1: because I mean this is again we've talked about this,

620
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:51,040
Speaker 1: uh in the Subways episode in particular, we talked about it.

621
00:35:51,280 --> 00:35:56,799
Speaker 1: How this same period where London was experiencing explosive population growth. Yeah,

622
00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:00,839
Speaker 1: it's the Industrial Revolution when suddenly there are fewer there's

623
00:36:00,880 --> 00:36:04,600
Speaker 1: fewer need of farmers, and there's a greater need of

624
00:36:04,600 --> 00:36:07,960
Speaker 1: of labor in various ways in the cities and the

625
00:36:08,080 --> 00:36:12,280
Speaker 1: urban areas. So you had this migration of people into cities,

626
00:36:12,360 --> 00:36:15,680
Speaker 1: plus the you know, the fact that people still make people.

627
00:36:16,120 --> 00:36:18,960
Speaker 1: So there was that too going on and uh, and

628
00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:23,120
Speaker 1: so we have this this world where everything's getting more

629
00:36:23,200 --> 00:36:26,319
Speaker 1: complicated because suddenly there's just so many more people living

630
00:36:26,360 --> 00:36:29,960
Speaker 1: in the same physical space as before. Yeah. So, so

631
00:36:30,080 --> 00:36:32,800
Speaker 1: in the eighteen sixties, the GPO would award a contract

632
00:36:32,920 --> 00:36:36,200
Speaker 1: to one T. W. Rammell to constructing anumatic tube system

633
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:39,680
Speaker 1: that could carry mail throughout London. And Ramball's done some

634
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:43,239
Speaker 1: really interesting stuff. In eighteen sixty three, Rama would build

635
00:36:43,280 --> 00:36:46,640
Speaker 1: a two foot gauge pneumatic dispatch railway in central London.

636
00:36:47,239 --> 00:36:48,719
Speaker 1: More and then a bit because it takes a couple

637
00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:51,359
Speaker 1: of years before it opens. But in eighteen sixty four

638
00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:57,480
Speaker 1: Rambles Crystal Palace pneumatic railway opened. What so Crystal Palace

639
00:36:57,560 --> 00:37:01,799
Speaker 1: is sect area in London, a location in London. Um,

640
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:04,560
Speaker 1: so it wasn't The pneumatic railway itself was not a

641
00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:08,880
Speaker 1: crystal Palace. It would have been phenomenal, right. So it

642
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:11,200
Speaker 1: ran on a track that was about six hundred yards

643
00:37:11,239 --> 00:37:14,920
Speaker 1: in length, that's around five and the train cars had

644
00:37:15,080 --> 00:37:17,719
Speaker 1: colored bristles to help create a seal in a ten

645
00:37:17,800 --> 00:37:21,799
Speaker 1: ft diameter or a three meter diameter tunnel, So kind

646
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:24,560
Speaker 1: of similar to those flexible skirts we were talking about earlier,

647
00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:29,640
Speaker 1: excepting this case was bristly. Yeah. Uh So this massive

648
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:33,560
Speaker 1: fan would blow the carriage down onto one end of

649
00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:36,160
Speaker 1: the track. Then the fan would reverse to create a

650
00:37:36,200 --> 00:37:39,040
Speaker 1: partial vacuum to bring the carriage back. So it used

651
00:37:39,239 --> 00:37:43,880
Speaker 1: both principles of pneumatic tubes and a trip cost sixpence

652
00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:48,800
Speaker 1: in a song, or or just a sixpence. Yeah. I

653
00:37:48,840 --> 00:37:51,800
Speaker 1: always think of like Oliver, you know, I think of

654
00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:54,640
Speaker 1: like a Dickensie and musical when I think about the stuff.

655
00:37:55,120 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 1: In fact, I want to write one now at any rate.

656
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:01,280
Speaker 1: That's that's a good hobby. Next time on a very musical.

657
00:38:02,040 --> 00:38:04,480
Speaker 1: Oh man, now you guys are gonna request me to

658
00:38:04,600 --> 00:38:07,040
Speaker 1: never saying I know that. So it operated for just

659
00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:10,560
Speaker 1: two years, and depending upon whom you ask, it might

660
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:12,360
Speaker 1: or might not have been intended to serve as a

661
00:38:12,440 --> 00:38:15,160
Speaker 1: model for an atmospheric railway, but in a different sense,

662
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:18,600
Speaker 1: because obviously this one was completely encapsulated in the tunnel,

663
00:38:18,920 --> 00:38:21,400
Speaker 1: as opposed to the ones that had the tube that

664
00:38:21,520 --> 00:38:25,120
Speaker 1: ran parallel, well in between the rails, So this is

665
00:38:25,160 --> 00:38:29,000
Speaker 1: one the rails are completely encapsulated in the two. There

666
00:38:29,040 --> 00:38:31,880
Speaker 1: are a couple of cool urban legends about what happened

667
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:34,880
Speaker 1: to this particular railway. So one says it was just

668
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:38,960
Speaker 1: sealed off, that that once it stopped being used, they

669
00:38:39,040 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 1: sealed off the tunnel, and that in fact there is

670
00:38:42,719 --> 00:38:47,080
Speaker 1: this lone tunnel underneath London where if you were able

671
00:38:47,120 --> 00:38:49,240
Speaker 1: to get access to it, you would see the tracks

672
00:38:49,360 --> 00:38:53,120
Speaker 1: and even the carriage itself. There was a lady who

673
00:38:53,239 --> 00:38:55,960
Speaker 1: even reported that she had found it, and there were

674
00:38:56,200 --> 00:39:00,600
Speaker 1: skeletons sitting in the carriage dressed in Victorian outfit. It

675
00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:03,719
Speaker 1: seems unlikely. Yeah, I don't know, Like we're shutting her down.

676
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:06,520
Speaker 1: Don't let anybody out. We're just shutting off the lights

677
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:11,600
Speaker 1: and leaving. Yeah, you got your sixpences long gone. You

678
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:14,640
Speaker 1: are on the wrong train. That sounds like a Stephen

679
00:39:14,719 --> 00:39:18,320
Speaker 1: King story. Um, there's another urban legend that said the

680
00:39:18,320 --> 00:39:21,400
Speaker 1: tunnel collapsed from a bomb which trapped the carriage and

681
00:39:21,719 --> 00:39:25,640
Speaker 1: some passengers in it forever like there was essentially a

682
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:28,279
Speaker 1: cave in and they were stuck and died and are

683
00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:31,840
Speaker 1: entombed in the carriage. But those kind of bombs weren't

684
00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:35,439
Speaker 1: really falling on London for another few decades. Yeah, that's

685
00:39:35,480 --> 00:39:38,319
Speaker 1: the thing. And this this legend was circulating as early

686
00:39:38,400 --> 00:39:41,040
Speaker 1: as nineteen thirty, but there was there were no bombs

687
00:39:41,239 --> 00:39:44,759
Speaker 1: that were going off in the eighteen sixties at in

688
00:39:44,960 --> 00:39:49,160
Speaker 1: London like like that at that time was blitz. No

689
00:39:49,320 --> 00:39:51,319
Speaker 1: and and in fact the Blitz didn't even happen by

690
00:39:51,360 --> 00:39:54,080
Speaker 1: the time this urban legend first started circulating. And so

691
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:56,960
Speaker 1: it got stronger after World War Two, I mean more

692
00:39:57,160 --> 00:40:00,759
Speaker 1: because partly because people were using underground station and I'm

693
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:05,560
Speaker 1: two tunnel lines as as a place to seek refuge

694
00:40:05,680 --> 00:40:09,240
Speaker 1: during the Blitz, but that was just an urban legend

695
00:40:09,719 --> 00:40:14,640
Speaker 1: in anyway. In eighteen sixty five the London Pneumatic Dispatch

696
00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 1: Railway opened And this one is not meant to carry passengers,

697
00:40:19,160 --> 00:40:21,720
Speaker 1: although I think someone wrote it the first time it opened.

698
00:40:22,280 --> 00:40:26,680
Speaker 1: But the yeah again, like that would hurt. Yeah, I

699
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:30,160
Speaker 1: think so too. The cars themselves, Uh, I was reading

700
00:40:30,320 --> 00:40:35,759
Speaker 1: one description. It was said they were coffin sized. Yeah,

701
00:40:35,880 --> 00:40:38,200
Speaker 1: so you uh, they're not meant to carry people. But

702
00:40:38,520 --> 00:40:41,040
Speaker 1: but freight and mail right that this is part of

703
00:40:41,080 --> 00:40:44,520
Speaker 1: the mail system. Uh. And this comes directly from the

704
00:40:44,600 --> 00:40:49,400
Speaker 1: Pall Mall Gazette on October twelfth, eighteen sixty five. And

705
00:40:49,520 --> 00:40:53,080
Speaker 1: you know it's in England. Okay, do it? Do it? Yeah?

706
00:40:53,960 --> 00:40:56,680
Speaker 1: The driving power is that Holben and consists of two

707
00:40:56,800 --> 00:41:00,600
Speaker 1: twenty four horse power steam engines. They set in most disc,

708
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:03,360
Speaker 1: the diameter of which is about twenty two ft. The

709
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:07,360
Speaker 1: immense circular fan revolves with great rapidity in an air chamber,

710
00:41:07,680 --> 00:41:11,839
Speaker 1: creating an almost irresistible atmosphere, power which, by the use

711
00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:14,800
Speaker 1: of valves, can be used either for blowing the trains

712
00:41:14,880 --> 00:41:19,560
Speaker 1: through the tubes or literally sucking them back again. So

713
00:41:19,640 --> 00:41:22,520
Speaker 1: there you go. Good show. Thank you, thank you. Yeah,

714
00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:25,279
Speaker 1: that was when I read that description. I was just

715
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:32,680
Speaker 1: so enchanted by the resistible atmosphere power with such great rapidity.

716
00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:36,759
Speaker 1: So I was, oh, how British this this newspaper is,

717
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:41,600
Speaker 1: but yeah, very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Meanwhile, back on the telegraph,

718
00:41:41,719 --> 00:41:46,000
Speaker 1: and in eighteen sixty eight, the UK government would pass

719
00:41:46,080 --> 00:41:50,520
Speaker 1: the Telegraphs Act, which nationalized the telegraph industry and wrapped

720
00:41:50,560 --> 00:41:54,480
Speaker 1: it into the Post Office, thus meaning that the g

721
00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:57,680
Speaker 1: p O acquired like really quite a lot of pneumatic

722
00:41:57,800 --> 00:42:01,520
Speaker 1: telegraph lines which various companies had been privately building out

723
00:42:01,600 --> 00:42:04,320
Speaker 1: over the past decade. Now this is also interesting because

724
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:08,240
Speaker 1: again it mirrors what happened with the subway system in London.

725
00:42:08,719 --> 00:42:11,840
Speaker 1: The subways were built by private companies, so you had

726
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 1: a bunch of different independent systems that were not connected

727
00:42:16,680 --> 00:42:19,320
Speaker 1: together at first, until the government realized that this was

728
00:42:19,560 --> 00:42:24,239
Speaker 1: a serious public good good and that you know, they

729
00:42:24,320 --> 00:42:26,440
Speaker 1: wanted to help it out as much as possible and

730
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:29,640
Speaker 1: conform everything so that it could be used as widely

731
00:42:29,680 --> 00:42:34,800
Speaker 1: as possible. Exactly the same. Yeah. Meanwhile, across the Pond

732
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:39,280
Speaker 1: eight seventy an inventor by the name of Alfred ELI

733
00:42:39,480 --> 00:42:43,799
Speaker 1: Beach begins construction on a pneumatic subway in New York

734
00:42:44,320 --> 00:42:48,600
Speaker 1: called the Beach Pneumatic Transit, obviously named after the inventor.

735
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:52,279
Speaker 1: The subway did not transport commuters to a magical New

736
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:57,440
Speaker 1: York beach, sadly, but here's some interesting and odd facts

737
00:42:57,560 --> 00:43:01,840
Speaker 1: about that project. So, first, Beach lied about what he

738
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:05,120
Speaker 1: was doing. I read somewhere that um that he had

739
00:43:05,640 --> 00:43:09,480
Speaker 1: like personal disagreements with one of the powers that were

740
00:43:09,680 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 1: at the time, Um, someone by the name of Boss Tweed.

741
00:43:13,680 --> 00:43:18,000
Speaker 1: Oh well, here's the thing. Originally Boss Tweed backed Beach,

742
00:43:18,400 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 1: but Boss Tweed fail fell from favor quite famously through corruption.

743
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:26,799
Speaker 1: And then after the fact Beach said he was one

744
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:29,760
Speaker 1: of the men who stood in my way. He changed

745
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:34,160
Speaker 1: the story, and people said okay and went along with

746
00:43:34,239 --> 00:43:37,160
Speaker 1: the story because they wanted to. They wanted this system

747
00:43:37,280 --> 00:43:39,680
Speaker 1: to be put in place. But it ended up not

748
00:43:39,800 --> 00:43:42,000
Speaker 1: being enough because there were other issues that would follow.

749
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:45,680
Speaker 1: But yeah, originally Beach and Buss Tweed were buddy buddy,

750
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:48,200
Speaker 1: and it was only after the fact when when Boss

751
00:43:48,200 --> 00:43:50,680
Speaker 1: Tweeds going down Beaches like, I'm not going down with

752
00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:53,799
Speaker 1: you like that guy was always a pain in the butt.

753
00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:58,280
Speaker 1: So so Beach really wanted to create this subway system.

754
00:43:58,480 --> 00:44:00,200
Speaker 1: Um and you know, in order to do that, he

755
00:44:00,239 --> 00:44:02,560
Speaker 1: would have to dig up part of a New York street.

756
00:44:03,040 --> 00:44:05,600
Speaker 1: He knew that Tweed would not be excited about this thing.

757
00:44:06,080 --> 00:44:08,840
Speaker 1: So he was like, well, what if I were building

758
00:44:09,120 --> 00:44:12,520
Speaker 1: a pneumatic male system. Yeah, well, you know what, we

759
00:44:12,600 --> 00:44:15,799
Speaker 1: need a couple of couple pneumatic tubes. Want to send

760
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:18,000
Speaker 1: mail one way, one to bring mail back the other way.

761
00:44:18,080 --> 00:44:20,560
Speaker 1: Clearly we can't have both going the same tube because

762
00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:23,319
Speaker 1: if messages need to be sent in both directions at

763
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:27,799
Speaker 1: the same time, they're or it's not gonna work. Pandemonium, yeah,

764
00:44:27,920 --> 00:44:30,279
Speaker 1: dogs and cats. So what we need to do is

765
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:33,040
Speaker 1: have two tubes. And so they said, all right, that

766
00:44:33,280 --> 00:44:35,319
Speaker 1: that proposal we can get behind. You can you can

767
00:44:35,360 --> 00:44:38,080
Speaker 1: build your your male pneumatic tubes. And then he says,

768
00:44:38,440 --> 00:44:40,279
Speaker 1: all right, well, what I'm gonna do is I'm going

769
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:43,680
Speaker 1: to house this pair of tubes within a larger tube

770
00:44:43,719 --> 00:44:46,120
Speaker 1: to protect them. So so I'm gonna need to dig

771
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:49,480
Speaker 1: really pretty big tunnel. It's gonna be it's gonna be

772
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:52,600
Speaker 1: pretty big. So Beach also came up with a tunneling

773
00:44:52,719 --> 00:44:56,000
Speaker 1: shield and we talked about those in the Subway Episode two. Tunneling.

774
00:44:56,040 --> 00:45:00,239
Speaker 1: Tunneling shields are essentially a tunneling tool that hold up

775
00:45:00,280 --> 00:45:03,000
Speaker 1: the integrity of the tunnel while you're digging, so that

776
00:45:03,160 --> 00:45:06,120
Speaker 1: people behind you can shore that up with brick or

777
00:45:06,360 --> 00:45:10,880
Speaker 1: or whatever they're using to seal it off. So he

778
00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:13,600
Speaker 1: goes in and he starts digging this tunnel. Everyone thinks

779
00:45:13,640 --> 00:45:16,719
Speaker 1: he's digging tunnels for humatic mail teams. He's like, ha ha,

780
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:20,680
Speaker 1: I now have this wonderful device that I'm going to

781
00:45:20,800 --> 00:45:23,600
Speaker 1: demonstrate to people to show them how magical this is.

782
00:45:24,280 --> 00:45:28,239
Speaker 1: You can ride in a carriage underground, thus avoiding all

783
00:45:28,280 --> 00:45:31,200
Speaker 1: the dangerous traffic that's happening up on the surface level

784
00:45:31,239 --> 00:45:33,719
Speaker 1: where you've got you know, horse drawn carriages going willy

785
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 1: nilly all over the place and passing pedestrians everywhere. Exactly

786
00:45:38,160 --> 00:45:41,040
Speaker 1: back to the cats and dogs. So he ended up

787
00:45:41,719 --> 00:45:45,279
Speaker 1: buildings a a track that was only three feet long

788
00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:49,719
Speaker 1: or about yeah, and the tunnel was eight feet in

789
00:45:49,760 --> 00:45:52,839
Speaker 1: diameter or two point four meters, and about twenty people

790
00:45:52,920 --> 00:45:55,560
Speaker 1: could ride on the carriage at a single time. And

791
00:45:55,719 --> 00:46:00,680
Speaker 1: he himself funded the construction almost entirely out of his

792
00:46:00,760 --> 00:46:04,240
Speaker 1: own pocket. So hundreds of thousands of dollars that Beach

793
00:46:04,800 --> 00:46:08,520
Speaker 1: personally put forward to this because he really believed in it. Uh,

794
00:46:08,640 --> 00:46:10,600
Speaker 1: if you wanted to take a ride on it once

795
00:46:10,640 --> 00:46:13,680
Speaker 1: it opened, so he opens it and you actually had

796
00:46:13,760 --> 00:46:17,200
Speaker 1: to go in through a department store. They had a

797
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:22,160
Speaker 1: an entrance to the station quote unquote station through their basement.

798
00:46:23,600 --> 00:46:26,680
Speaker 1: The station itself was lit by gas lanterns, had a

799
00:46:26,760 --> 00:46:30,920
Speaker 1: fountain with gold fish in it, and two statues of mercury,

800
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:37,200
Speaker 1: uh flanking the tunnel. Yeah. Very understated, was Mr Beach.

801
00:46:38,360 --> 00:46:41,160
Speaker 1: And so if you wanted to ride, you needed two bits,

802
00:46:43,200 --> 00:46:45,520
Speaker 1: so two bits in order for you to ride, and

803
00:46:45,719 --> 00:46:47,320
Speaker 1: that would give you a trip to the end of

804
00:46:47,360 --> 00:46:51,600
Speaker 1: the line and back again. And all ticket uh, all

805
00:46:51,640 --> 00:46:54,360
Speaker 1: tickets that were bought, all that money was given to charity.

806
00:46:54,400 --> 00:46:56,360
Speaker 1: In fact, I think it was given to charity for

807
00:46:56,760 --> 00:47:00,520
Speaker 1: children whose parents were whose fathers were soldiers, would who

808
00:47:00,560 --> 00:47:04,080
Speaker 1: had died. So it was it was all going to

809
00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 1: a charitable cause and it was yeah. Yeah, So it

810
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:13,240
Speaker 1: was supposed to be the birth of the subway system

811
00:47:13,239 --> 00:47:17,200
Speaker 1: of New York, but it did not get much traction.

812
00:47:18,120 --> 00:47:23,680
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so uh, boss the boss Tweed corruption scandal happened,

813
00:47:23,719 --> 00:47:26,120
Speaker 1: and then Beach had to distance himself from Boss Tweed.

814
00:47:26,640 --> 00:47:30,359
Speaker 1: Then uh he there was a stock market crash which

815
00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:33,000
Speaker 1: ended up pulling a lot of funding away from any

816
00:47:33,120 --> 00:47:36,759
Speaker 1: possibility of extending this outward. Also, there were people saying, like,

817
00:47:36,920 --> 00:47:41,759
Speaker 1: could this actually be efficient? Um, we couldn't necessarily run

818
00:47:41,920 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 1: multiple trains on a single track. It would all be

819
00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:48,520
Speaker 1: one train per track because you couldn't You couldn't control

820
00:47:48,600 --> 00:47:52,319
Speaker 1: their movement between stations otherwise, like how would you how

821
00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:54,880
Speaker 1: would you get train a to to you know, unless

822
00:47:54,920 --> 00:47:57,759
Speaker 1: you have like a really complex system of blowers. Um.

823
00:47:57,880 --> 00:48:00,400
Speaker 1: So they started saying, well, this doesn't like it's going

824
00:48:00,440 --> 00:48:02,680
Speaker 1: to be very efficient. There's not there's no money to

825
00:48:02,760 --> 00:48:08,080
Speaker 1: support it. And so also the rise of electricity meant

826
00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:11,600
Speaker 1: that ultimately it became moot. And again you can listen

827
00:48:11,680 --> 00:48:13,680
Speaker 1: to how subways work to learn about the rest of

828
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:20,200
Speaker 1: that story. So, while it was never really taken seriously

829
00:48:20,320 --> 00:48:25,800
Speaker 1: as a means of transportation for passengers, Beach's original proposal

830
00:48:25,920 --> 00:48:29,120
Speaker 1: to build those pneumatic mail tubes, which he totally wasn't

831
00:48:29,120 --> 00:48:33,600
Speaker 1: serious about, did actually catch on, not as he originally

832
00:48:33,640 --> 00:48:36,520
Speaker 1: imagined them, which were these like ten ft diameter tubes

833
00:48:36,600 --> 00:48:39,959
Speaker 1: above city streets designed for both people in mail, which

834
00:48:40,040 --> 00:48:45,920
Speaker 1: he was calling the US pneumatic dispatch, right, so that

835
00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:49,120
Speaker 1: never happened, as I'm sorry, clearly he was he was

836
00:48:49,640 --> 00:48:53,680
Speaker 1: influenced at least in part by the London pneumatic Dispatch,

837
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:56,719
Speaker 1: which was being successful as far as the mail goes,

838
00:48:56,840 --> 00:49:01,120
Speaker 1: and um, so he would his his work would live

839
00:49:01,239 --> 00:49:04,720
Speaker 1: on within that system, although I think he died before

840
00:49:05,200 --> 00:49:09,920
Speaker 1: before it was actually built. Uh yeah, so yeah, there's well.

841
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:12,879
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, progress is built upon a lot

842
00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:16,320
Speaker 1: of hard work and sacrifice and not. In some cases

843
00:49:16,920 --> 00:49:19,480
Speaker 1: it comes to us at the expense of ideas that

844
00:49:19,640 --> 00:49:24,279
Speaker 1: seemed awesome, but ultimately we're untenable. However, something is you know,

845
00:49:24,480 --> 00:49:27,359
Speaker 1: salvageable from the idea, and I think that's the case

846
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:31,520
Speaker 1: with Beach. I hope you enjoyed that classic episode of

847
00:49:31,560 --> 00:49:33,719
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. Next week we will have part to the

848
00:49:34,160 --> 00:49:36,960
Speaker 1: exciting conclusion of a series of tubes. If you have

849
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:39,960
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics I should tackle in future episodes of

850
00:49:40,000 --> 00:49:42,640
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, please reach out to me. The best way

851
00:49:42,680 --> 00:49:44,560
Speaker 1: to do that is on Twitter. The handle for the

852
00:49:44,600 --> 00:49:47,440
Speaker 1: show is tech Stuff h s W. I'll talk to

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Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tex Stuff is an I Heart

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Speaker 1: Radio production. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit

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Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you

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Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. H