Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text up from dot
Speaker 1: com either and welcome to text UFF. I'm Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: and I'm Line and we're picking up where we left
Speaker 1: off last episode, which was about pneumatic tubes. Yes, because
Speaker 1: who knew they were a really big thing for a
Speaker 1: really long time. Yeah, and pretty cool. You know. I
Speaker 1: know a lot of people say they both suck and blow,
Speaker 1: but personally I think they're pretty awesome. They do, but
Speaker 1: in a cool way. Yeah, like like that's what they
Speaker 1: literally do. Yeah, a fan, Yeah, because it's it's pneumatic
Speaker 1: tubes are a air pressurization system that moved the thing
Speaker 1: from one point to Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, last time,
Speaker 1: we just left off with a Mr. Beach, the inventor
Speaker 1: and engineer who sunk a lot of his personal fortune
Speaker 1: into the attempt to create a new men the subway
Speaker 1: system in New York, which ultimately did not happen failed completely.
Speaker 1: But we're still in the eighteen hundreds, yeah, and lots
Speaker 1: more stuff was going on. In e one, D. Brown
Speaker 1: would patent the cash Carrier, which was in in the
Speaker 1: United States, which was an in building system for sending
Speaker 1: money throughout department stores. Um. These suckers operated for decades.
Speaker 1: UM One Philadelphia retailer, Wannamakers, installed a really huge system
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty. That was just a year after they
Speaker 1: got electric lighting. I've actually seen these in department stores.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen one of these? I don't think
Speaker 1: I have now, So there were some old department stores
Speaker 1: in UM in Georgia where they still use these. And
Speaker 1: I'll talk more about, you know, the purpose of these
Speaker 1: in department stores, because I'm sure there's still quite a
Speaker 1: few that still have them, um behind the scenes, yeah,
Speaker 1: or or it's one of those things that maybe it's
Speaker 1: just one of those that's only in older buildings. And
Speaker 1: you know whether or not they're still in use a
Speaker 1: question that you know, that's a different question. But I've
Speaker 1: actually seen them operated, and I remember wondering how they worked.
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty sure my dad made up a completely
Speaker 1: fictional like. I'm sure they were like hobbits. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't ask science fiction writers to explain science kind my dad,
Speaker 1: but if he doesn't know the answer, he will be
Speaker 1: more than happy to make it up. And here's the thing,
Speaker 1: you probably knew the answer too, So at any rate, yes,
Speaker 1: and um and by six the postal tube system in
Speaker 1: London stretched for thirty four miles that's about fifty four
Speaker 1: kilometers underneath the city, and it was transmitting thirty two
Speaker 1: thousand messages per day. It speeds up to fifty one
Speaker 1: miles per hour. That's about eighty two kilometers per hour.
Speaker 1: That's pretty fast. Uh. Yeah, the mail was carried by
Speaker 1: what they referred to at the time of street tubes,
Speaker 1: which were these like two point five inch diameter tubes
Speaker 1: that were made lad and encased in iron ducks a
Speaker 1: couple of feet beneath the street. Um. Today, some of these,
Speaker 1: like I said at the top of our previous episode,
Speaker 1: are still intact and are used to house telecom cables.
Speaker 1: Really is a series of tubes before it really is? Uh.
Speaker 1: Then in two the US Congress would authorize an investigation
Speaker 1: into this crazy pneumatic mail system thing. Um. This was
Speaker 1: headed up by Postmaster General John when Amaker, who is
Speaker 1: totally the same dude who owns those lines of department stores. Uh.
Speaker 1: And yeah, he would would take charge of the project. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty cool. He's a pretty rad dude, by the way.
Speaker 1: If if I'm not sure if history mist in history
Speaker 1: has ever talked about him, but he basically created the
Speaker 1: idea of the department store and is you know, went
Speaker 1: on to be Postmaster General, did a bunch of stuff. So,
Speaker 1: due to his influence, in seven, New York City would
Speaker 1: open their own pneumatic mail system that would send letter
Speaker 1: and parcels on a loop under Manhattan at about about
Speaker 1: thirty miles per hour forty kilometers per hour, not not
Speaker 1: too shabby, respectable speed. All of this was operated by
Speaker 1: the Tubular Dispatch Company. Fully it were the totally tubularular
Speaker 1: that would probably be the California right right, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: in l a um. According to the USPS, at peak productivity,
Speaker 1: six million pieces of mail went through the system daily.
Speaker 1: That's a rate of five carriers per minute each with
Speaker 1: a maximum load of some five hundred letters. Now keep
Speaker 1: in mind this is and remember then eight six, that's
Speaker 1: when Mr Beach died. That's the guy who was going
Speaker 1: to build the pneumatic tube system. Uh So, so around
Speaker 1: around that time, lots of cities started to uh to
Speaker 1: to have these crazy pneumatic tube things, um Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: Satan Louis, across the pond Aris, Berlin, Vienna. Italy even
Speaker 1: issued specialized stamps for sending mail through tubes. They're really
Speaker 1: pretty I'll have to take a look at those, yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then in nineteen eleven, pneumatic tubes started being used to
Speaker 1: assist telephone systems. All right, how do you mean? Um?
Speaker 1: This was over in in Britain and they were called
Speaker 1: ticket tubes. They were used in telephone stations to help
Speaker 1: operators account for calls. So so when a call was completed,
Speaker 1: the operator would write up a docket on a on
Speaker 1: a stiff piece of paper that recorded the time of
Speaker 1: the call and then the duration and total charge the
Speaker 1: incurred by the customers. That then fold that stiff piece
Speaker 1: of paper into a sort of sale and just send
Speaker 1: it straight up to the accounting office. On the same system,
Speaker 1: error messages could also be sent from the switchboards to
Speaker 1: the machinery rooms. So this is different from what I
Speaker 1: thought when you said that amanic tubes were being were
Speaker 1: helping out with telephone systems. I just imagine that she
Speaker 1: just started screaming into a tube, and I hope that
Speaker 1: someone somewhere down the line could hear you. They did. Actually,
Speaker 1: I believe that they did actually have some tubes like
Speaker 1: that in some buildings, like just shout into this tube.
Speaker 1: Like some of the old old ships had those two
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, they were mostly used in in in
Speaker 1: naval naval capacities. But I also just love the idea
Speaker 1: of the like original four or four message being like
Speaker 1: sent on a stiff piece of paper that was just
Speaker 1: sailed along. I imagine Google will have to bring that
Speaker 1: back for the full's day sometime in the future. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then in nineteen thirteen, one Waldemeir Comfort. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: Valdemar comfort excellent. I'm so bad at German you think
Speaker 1: that over the years I would have gotten better anyway. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was then the managing editor of Scientific American, and
Speaker 1: he proposed that, like, really soon we should be delivering
Speaker 1: prepared me two homes via pneumatic tubes. He was like,
Speaker 1: this is a direct quote. He was like, if a
Speaker 1: letter can be shot through a pneumatic tube from New
Speaker 1: York to Brooklyn, why not a five course dinner? Now,
Speaker 1: obviously you would want to enclose said meal and some
Speaker 1: sort of container and just having like a turkey shoot
Speaker 1: through the tube at top speed. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: kind of like that idea. You just imagine like, like
Speaker 1: I didn't get a full five course meal. I guess
Speaker 1: maybe I did. All I can tell is it's mush now,
Speaker 1: you know. I'd be kind of like having the Willy
Speaker 1: Wonka gum, except that all the flavors of all the
Speaker 1: courses are delivered simultaneously speeds of like thirty Yeah, I
Speaker 1: that never took off, not surprisingly. Also, I mean obviously,
Speaker 1: in order to have that even work, first of all,
Speaker 1: the tubes would have to be of a considerable size,
Speaker 1: and also you would have to make sure you had
Speaker 1: the appropriate breaking system to make certain that the food
Speaker 1: was not just converted into sludge by the time it arrived. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I and I don't believe that those those air
Speaker 1: braking systems were really developed until like maybe the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: somewhere in there. Um so so. At any rate, in
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen, or by nineteen fourteen, rather some third of
Speaker 1: New York City's mail was being sent by pneumatic tube um.
Speaker 1: But oops, hey, that was the year the World War
Speaker 1: broke broke out, um, and so the US Post Office
Speaker 1: suspended the pneumatic mail system on the basis of fuel preservation. UM.
Speaker 1: After the war, the service would be restored, but only
Speaker 1: in New York City and Boston. The other cities of
Speaker 1: the U S there pneumatic mail systems would remain dormant. Ye,
Speaker 1: Now this does make sense. I mean obviously, during the
Speaker 1: World War, you know they're they're using motors that are
Speaker 1: running on fuel, and that fuel was very necessary to
Speaker 1: the war effort. Yeah, or some of them, we're probably
Speaker 1: still running on steam engines. That's true. That's true. And
Speaker 1: I mean even just from a labor or perspective, you
Speaker 1: want to make certain that you are dedicating that labor
Speaker 1: to the efforts that are going to give you the
Speaker 1: most positive outcome from this advantage. Right. Um. Although in
Speaker 1: London those were the pneumatic male tube systems were considered
Speaker 1: important enough to keep going. Um. They they kept their
Speaker 1: tubes running through the war. Um especially I think because
Speaker 1: they were tied to um uh telegraphy. So they were
Speaker 1: really useful for keeping secret messages secret during the war,
Speaker 1: especially because you know, other quick communication methods could be
Speaker 1: tapped right, right, So it's obviously tapping into a pneumatic
Speaker 1: tube would be pretty difficult. You just break the tube, right,
Speaker 1: You have to dig under a city street and break
Speaker 1: the tube and the people notice, yeah you do that
Speaker 1: be hard, It would be hard. For you to be
Speaker 1: able to actually intercept a message at all. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can understand why it would remain to a way of
Speaker 1: sending messages in secret. However, the fact that it's a
Speaker 1: way to send messages in secret also creates a vulnerability. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so. In nineteen forty, the Luftwaffa specifically targeted London's
Speaker 1: pneumatic tube system. Uh. They successfully bombed out a bunch
Speaker 1: of it, and it would take about a year to
Speaker 1: recover the tube system at all, and it would not
Speaker 1: be fully restored until after the war was over. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: over in Germany, the Berlin system was also targeted, but
Speaker 1: had didn't didn't suffer enough damage for a lot of
Speaker 1: it to be taken offline. I mean, there were parts
Speaker 1: that had to be repaired, but it largely remained operational
Speaker 1: throughout the war. Yeah. Uh. In ninety three, the New
Speaker 1: York City Post Office would shut down their male tubes,
Speaker 1: those famale tubes that had been proposed by Beach back
Speaker 1: in the day. Uh, poor Beach, you just you just
Speaker 1: didn't quite live long enough. I mean, granted, again, the
Speaker 1: electrical system ended up create being the future of the subway,
Speaker 1: but still that I of using it for for freight
Speaker 1: and for mail was something that he could have actually
Speaker 1: if he if he had lived just another year, he
Speaker 1: would have seen it in operations. Although by this point
Speaker 1: the competitor for pneumatic tubes was really motor vehicles. Um,
Speaker 1: the Post Office began in investing in trucks, which kind
Speaker 1: of made all of these magic tubes a little bit
Speaker 1: inefficient by comparison. You know, you put you can put
Speaker 1: heavier things, more things in a truck, and you can
Speaker 1: drive it further distances to more than one place. So yeah, um,
Speaker 1: you could actually make multiple stops. Crazy. But meanwhile, around
Speaker 1: the same time, the CIA was busy building a really
Speaker 1: huge tumatic tube system on their campus in Langley, Virginia
Speaker 1: that would wind up transmitting some seven thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: messages every day. Yea, even the n s A wasn't
Speaker 1: able to read all those. Oh. By nineteen sixty two
Speaker 1: London would also down its street tube system h and
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six Berlin which shut THEIRS down as well.
Speaker 1: There was pretty big that if you lined up all
Speaker 1: the tubes in to end, you would have about two
Speaker 1: miles of them, and that's about four d KOs And
Speaker 1: like we said, you know, this one was one that
Speaker 1: was built in eighteen sixty five, made it all the
Speaker 1: way through nineteen seventy six and even survived those World
Speaker 1: Wars mostly intact. So that's pretty pretty impressive. The Paris
Speaker 1: system would last until seven, the Paris the Paris System,
Speaker 1: by the way, it was named the carts a new
Speaker 1: Oh your French, I love you so so dearly. By
Speaker 1: night nine. Even the CIA would give up the pneumatic
Speaker 1: ghost as email began hitting the scene. And now with
Speaker 1: the n s A, I'm sure they're regretting that decision. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. In the UK, the government may will
Speaker 1: be using pneumatic tubes. It's latest two thousand three. There's
Speaker 1: a written record of messages being sent between ten Downing
Speaker 1: Street and the and the Foreign Office by pneumatic tube,
Speaker 1: like like right alongside fancy encrypted computer system. And I
Speaker 1: know it's still in use in the Norwegian parliamentary buildings
Speaker 1: because I watched a really cool video. So there's a
Speaker 1: video on YouTube and it's it is Norwegian. They're speaking Norwegian.
Speaker 1: I cannot understand Norwegians, so I do not know what
Speaker 1: the description is. I assume it's an explanation of what
Speaker 1: is about to happen, but probably not saying like this
Speaker 1: entire video is lies. I'm guessing that's probably not the case.
Speaker 1: But in this in this video, they have a canister
Speaker 1: that's outfitted on one end with a go pro and
Speaker 1: a light. So the light obviously is necessary because they
Speaker 1: want to capture what it looks like if you were
Speaker 1: to go through one of these pneumatic tubes. But you
Speaker 1: need the light because it's gonna be dark in there.
Speaker 1: So they have someone from Parliament I assume, set the
Speaker 1: canister into one of the devices. They look like a
Speaker 1: T M S. I'll talk more about that in just
Speaker 1: a second. But they program where it needs to go,
Speaker 1: you know, they select the destination, they hit the button
Speaker 1: and it gets pulled up into the pneumatic system and
Speaker 1: starts rocketing through all those pipes. So you can actually
Speaker 1: watch the journey, and it takes a you know, a
Speaker 1: minute or so for it to get from where they
Speaker 1: sent it to its destination. Uh. And I think they
Speaker 1: even said it so that it hit a place and
Speaker 1: then had to backtrack some because at least that's what
Speaker 1: it looked like. They definitely went through some sort of
Speaker 1: sorting system at least once, which is kind of cool,
Speaker 1: Like it's not just a straight shot, which would have
Speaker 1: been you know, I've been like it looks tonnel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a little more exciting. It also looks pretty rough,
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of clattering around, which makes you
Speaker 1: think like, yeah, but based on this principle, might not
Speaker 1: have been the most gener toll of rides um, but
Speaker 1: still pretty awesome. And uh, and keep an eye out
Speaker 1: on Facebook and Twitter probably and and tumbler. I'll send
Speaker 1: out a link to the video because it is pretty
Speaker 1: interesting to watch, even if you don't understand Norwegian. But
Speaker 1: that also leads us to a discussion about how pneumatic
Speaker 1: tubes are being used today, you know in the UK,
Speaker 1: may be used for government purposes in Norway as well,
Speaker 1: maybe in the US government, particularly in more secretive circles.
Speaker 1: Kind of hard to say. They don't really advertise that
Speaker 1: they do not. Yeah, no, that part they advertised that
Speaker 1: they are being secretive, just not how they're doing it. Um.
Speaker 1: So in order to really talk about this, one of
Speaker 1: the things I saw and I thought I had to
Speaker 1: bring it up because you know, Lauren was on the
Speaker 1: show to talk about coffee. Oh yeah. The last time
Speaker 1: I was here, we were talking about how coffee machines were. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as it turns out, there was a pneumatic system
Speaker 1: that's very closely tied to coffee, and I thought i'd
Speaker 1: bring that up. There's actually a video about this too,
Speaker 1: although it's not quite as harrowing as they journey through
Speaker 1: the pneumatic tube. Bought the go pro. So there's a company.
Speaker 1: It's called the Roasting Plant, and it's a coffee company
Speaker 1: that has stores in New York City. When I was
Speaker 1: the video dated to a time when they only had
Speaker 1: a store in Manhattan. But I've seen the plural used
Speaker 1: to describe their stores now, so I assume they're more
Speaker 1: than one. Uh. And they have something called the java Bot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so here's what the java bot does. You get? They
Speaker 1: actually have green coffee beans, so they right, So these
Speaker 1: are unrested trees exactly, and so you know, once you've
Speaker 1: dried them in everything and then the whole thing. You
Speaker 1: can learn more about that in our episode about how
Speaker 1: coffee machines were. Yeah, we go into the tail because
Speaker 1: there's a subject we're passionate about. It's coffee. Uh. So
Speaker 1: you take the these beans that have not yet been roasted,
Speaker 1: and you put them into canisters that then are attached
Speaker 1: by tubes to a roaster. Now, whenever you need to
Speaker 1: roast a specific type of coffee, it can automatically pull
Speaker 1: the beans from those canisters through the tubes to the roaster.
Speaker 1: Once it's done roasting, it sends them through other tubes
Speaker 1: to other storage canisters so that you have your different
Speaker 1: you know, different types of coffee being roasted side by side,
Speaker 1: and they're all sorted properly. And this way, when you
Speaker 1: want a particular type of coffee. Let's say that you
Speaker 1: go in and you're like, I want a mix of
Speaker 1: Sumatran and Ethiopian coffee, you could totally do that and
Speaker 1: the system will end up pulling exactly the right number
Speaker 1: of beans from each It measures it automatically, and and yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole thing is automatic. So it's pretty pretty cool
Speaker 1: to look at. And from what I understand, the way
Speaker 1: they describe their stores is that it's like walking into
Speaker 1: a giant coffee machine, except it's a coffee mach that's
Speaker 1: also a roaster, so it goes beyond what a normal
Speaker 1: coffee machine does. So I'm pretty sure that they have
Speaker 1: to roast the beans ahead of time, because there's no
Speaker 1: way you could roast them fast enough for someone waiting
Speaker 1: for a cup of coffee to get their coffee. I
Speaker 1: think I would think that roasting them that fast would
Speaker 1: have to be at temperatures that you don't really want.
Speaker 1: You just burn the beans. So my guess is that
Speaker 1: they roast them and then what happens is when you
Speaker 1: order a cup of coffee for the first ones that
Speaker 1: had gone through, that's that process. Are the ones served
Speaker 1: up to you. And from what I've heard about the company,
Speaker 1: they don't keep any roasted beans longer than forty eight
Speaker 1: hours because after that they as well they should not
Speaker 1: because now it's no longer as fresh. But they're also
Speaker 1: other uses. A lot of hospital systems are using pneumatic tubes.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it's uh, it's really convenient, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, for transporting um thing things like like specimens
Speaker 1: and documents that have important time stamp pically across campuses.
Speaker 1: And this one really again, after watching that video of
Speaker 1: the pneumatic tube, like the journey through it, it surprised
Speaker 1: me to think of, you know, things like specimens and
Speaker 1: drugs being delivered this way, because typically you consider those
Speaker 1: to be really you know, delicate, delicate, you know, are
Speaker 1: usually in like glass containers and stuff. So I looked
Speaker 1: at a company that does this called swiss Log. It's
Speaker 1: just one company that does pneumatic systems for hospitals. That's
Speaker 1: one of the things they offer. And the pictures explained
Speaker 1: a lot. So the canisters, uh, were not just big
Speaker 1: plastic containers that you would put stuff in. They were
Speaker 1: actually they had a foam in them with openings that
Speaker 1: were just large enough to put in things like a
Speaker 1: vial of blood. So it holds it steady and it's
Speaker 1: padded all around, and then you can close it up.
Speaker 1: And obviously, if you're talking about things like healthcare, talking
Speaker 1: about patient privacy, you're talking about delivery drugs, there's a
Speaker 1: high need for security with these systems. Oh sure, yeah.
Speaker 1: You don't want just anyone walking off the street and
Speaker 1: opening up a canister, right yeah. Whether that's because that
Speaker 1: has you know, drugs that would be illegal for you
Speaker 1: to obtain without a prescription, or it contains some sensitive
Speaker 1: information about a particular person, whatever the reason, you would
Speaker 1: not want that to happen. So a lot of these
Speaker 1: systems also have security measures in place so that you
Speaker 1: cannot retrieve the canister unless you do something else first,
Speaker 1: like insert a pen, So you would have to know
Speaker 1: what the pen was. To retrieve that particular canister, you
Speaker 1: would have a little notification. Again, it looks like an
Speaker 1: a t M. You would walk up to it. It
Speaker 1: would say like a secure carrier. Um, uh, you know
Speaker 1: is in the system, and to retrieve it you would
Speaker 1: have to put in the pen or you might have
Speaker 1: to scan like a badge. So let's say that Lauren
Speaker 1: and I work in the same hospital, and I want
Speaker 1: to send Lauren some some information. I could make sure
Speaker 1: to pick her from a list specifically to to me
Speaker 1: yea of that exactly, you would swipe your badge and
Speaker 1: you'd be the only person capable of retrieving that particular
Speaker 1: uh whatever canisterer and in in hospital. Obviously, cutting down
Speaker 1: on the amount of time it takes to deal with
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff is a huge benefit both to
Speaker 1: the patient and to the hospital itself. So you can
Speaker 1: understand why this sort of system would be put in place. Um,
Speaker 1: they're they're usually these days so complex that they have
Speaker 1: to be controlled by computers because uh, you know, human
Speaker 1: button pushing is not as ideal, especially once you get
Speaker 1: into the really complex systems. I was reading about Stanford Hospitals,
Speaker 1: which started installing this huge numatic system. Before then, a
Speaker 1: team of like twenty people had the job of running
Speaker 1: important samples and results around the expanding Stanford Hospital campus
Speaker 1: um some eight million samples and results per year. And
Speaker 1: and even with that team of twenty people, they were
Speaker 1: frequently short staffed, which is, you know, really bad news
Speaker 1: when the freshness of the samples um or the immediacy
Speaker 1: of the results are are important to a patient's health
Speaker 1: and welfare. According to Stanford, the system as of now
Speaker 1: ish hosts a hundred and twenty four stations. Every nursing
Speaker 1: unit has its own. There are one forty one transfer units,
Speaker 1: nine interzone connectors, and twenty nine blowers um to alert
Speaker 1: employees to the arrival of the containers. The system has
Speaker 1: more than three dozen different combinations of chimes. I can
Speaker 1: only imagine what it's like learning what each chime is signifying.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, no, no, no, honey, that was beat
Speaker 1: beat boop bee boop boop. Yeah, that's not for you.
Speaker 1: If you are hearing two boops, don't even bother. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that was highway to Hell you're looking for stay
Speaker 1: were close, totally unrelated. One one is much faster to
Speaker 1: a very undesirable location, the other one takes a lot
Speaker 1: more effort, but you love being there. Just think of
Speaker 1: it in those sense. Now you'll be fine. But these
Speaker 1: these canistries that they use can can go up to
Speaker 1: eighteen miles per hour, which means that even at peak
Speaker 1: use of the system, which can which can get very busy,
Speaker 1: it only takes about three minutes for a package to
Speaker 1: transfer the longest route in the system, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you've ever been in one of these
Speaker 1: huge hospitals, you have to realize that if you were
Speaker 1: to physically give this to someone and have them running
Speaker 1: across a campus, yeah, and and take elevators or stairs.
Speaker 1: I mean, these these buildings can be gargantuous, like if
Speaker 1: you ever go to um Like here's an example in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: Great Memorial Hospital is an enormous beast of a building.
Speaker 1: So clearly, if you have a system of getting this
Speaker 1: through much faster, again, it could be a huge benefit
Speaker 1: both to the hospital and to the patient. So I
Speaker 1: love this next one you have because it terrifies me.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, Pneumatic systems are also being used in industrial
Speaker 1: plants and factories, and have been since about the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: really powerful tube systems began to to see use as
Speaker 1: transporters of like heavy machine parts and gravel and stuff
Speaker 1: like that with within factories. I mean, I can't even
Speaker 1: fathom how terrifying. Yeah, I didn't read any numbers on
Speaker 1: like exactly the horsepower required for this kind of thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know again we're talking air pressure as the thing
Speaker 1: that moves this stuff. That's a lot of air pressure.
Speaker 1: That's scary business. Yeah. I can only imagine the size
Speaker 1: of the canisters too. I mean, you have to have
Speaker 1: something that's going to be creating that seal like this
Speaker 1: start just loose machine parts rattling through tubes. I would
Speaker 1: hope not that would be even more terrifying. Um, But
Speaker 1: I mean I'm sure it's not like a like a
Speaker 1: civic worth of gravel that you're sending at the station,
Speaker 1: you know, all at once, and and it's probably on
Speaker 1: wheeld system similar to what the dispatch this stem in
Speaker 1: London was. That wasn't you know, Those weren't just giant
Speaker 1: canisters either. Those were the wheeled carts that were still
Speaker 1: pushed pneumatically, but um, we're running along on rails. Uh So.
Speaker 1: Also we talked earlier and in the first episode, we
Speaker 1: talked about the department stores using these two um to
Speaker 1: transport money, and so I was going to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about that and the way I saw it.
Speaker 1: So there were two things I saw them used for.
Speaker 1: I saw them used when someone would write a check
Speaker 1: at a department store. Instead of storing the check at
Speaker 1: the cashier's desk, they would go ahead and put it
Speaker 1: into one of these canisters put through the numatic tube
Speaker 1: system to be put to the processing center inside inside
Speaker 1: the same store, but on a level that customers never
Speaker 1: went to because it was the office level. And then
Speaker 1: there were also times whenever you were using really um
Speaker 1: large bills that you know, the cashier would not want
Speaker 1: to have that at his or her station the right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to have a lot of high bills
Speaker 1: at a point where you're going to be interacting with
Speaker 1: customers a lot, especially a point where you might have
Speaker 1: to leave the desk, you know. The responsible thing, the
Speaker 1: thing that department stores wanted was to get that that big,
Speaker 1: big money away from the point of contact with customers
Speaker 1: and into the central processing area, which you can do
Speaker 1: by shooting it through neumatic too. And then occasionally you
Speaker 1: would have the people over at the central unit create change.
Speaker 1: So if it was something like you're using a hundred
Speaker 1: dollar bill to buy a three dollar item, then they
Speaker 1: might they might not have the change at the cashier,
Speaker 1: but they would end up being able to do that
Speaker 1: over in the central area and then put it back
Speaker 1: in another caster, send it back down and there you go. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, I used to see this department stores. Um,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of big ones that we would
Speaker 1: go to when I was a kid. Uh some some
Speaker 1: in actual Atlanta and some of them over closer to Gainesville,
Speaker 1: which is where I grew up, Gainesville, Georgia, not Florida.
Speaker 1: And yep there was you know, people are like, oh, Gainesville,
Speaker 1: Florida's no smaller than that little city in in uh
Speaker 1: in Georgia are we were the poultry capital of the
Speaker 1: world and had a statue of a chicken in town square.
Speaker 1: That's not a joke. I didn't think you were joking.
Speaker 1: You can look up images on Google image search if
Speaker 1: you want to and make fun of me. In my
Speaker 1: childhood at any rate. But no, it was really neat
Speaker 1: to see those because the only other time I ever
Speaker 1: saw them was whenever my parents were going to a
Speaker 1: bank to deposit money or to and so you know
Speaker 1: the banks, Like if you were right up there adjacent
Speaker 1: to the bank wall, you don't need a pneumatic system that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's just a little shelf that you can kind
Speaker 1: of push stuff through right right, yeah, and then you
Speaker 1: know they'll they'll use their their grabbing stick or whatever
Speaker 1: to get it on their side. And then if you
Speaker 1: were like one over or two over, obviously, then you
Speaker 1: would need to have some sort of to livery system
Speaker 1: to get either like deposit slips or retrieve things whatever,
Speaker 1: and that's where the pneumatic tube system would come in.
Speaker 1: So those would be the places where I've seen them
Speaker 1: in action. Uh, And of course I've heard about them
Speaker 1: in other places, but like I want them to be here,
Speaker 1: Like I think we need to have pneumatic tubes. Oh here.
Speaker 1: It has to work, yeah, absolutely, I mean, honestly, once
Speaker 1: the construction in this building is done, we're going to
Speaker 1: have a real absence of irritating, loud, rattling noises. And
Speaker 1: I think that that that is a niche that can
Speaker 1: be filled absolutely by pneumatic tubes. I mean, our HVAC
Speaker 1: system does a pretty good job. I get so tired
Speaker 1: of sending emails, you know. Yeah, and I'm really trying
Speaker 1: to work on my handwriting. I think it could be
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. I have a feeling we would
Speaker 1: uninstall it after a day, But I am totally in
Speaker 1: favor of saying, let's install pneumatic tube system. Maybe whoever
Speaker 1: sits next to the blower would have a different opinion
Speaker 1: than I do. I suspect so. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: so this has been a really interesting topic. I mean,
Speaker 1: just again, this technology that is so you know, so
Speaker 1: it's it's old, but it's also kind of I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's something about it. I think it has that same
Speaker 1: kind of appeal as steampunk. Yeah. And I had no idea,
Speaker 1: no idea that these systems were so widespread. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: beyond something like you know, the limited use of the bank,
Speaker 1: like inside of a single building. I had no idea
Speaker 1: that they spread throughout cities. Yeah. It's such a such
Speaker 1: an interesting engineering way to get around the problem of
Speaker 1: how do you deliver mail in a dense urban environment
Speaker 1: in a timely manner, um relatively timely at any rate.
Speaker 1: So I mean we could still make that argument today.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was really cool. And Lauren, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining me on this pair of episodes.
Speaker 1: Great having you here again. Thank you, thank you for
Speaker 1: having me, Thanks for thanks for agreeing when I said, hey,
Speaker 1: let's do this thing. On the end, it was so
Speaker 1: much fun. And also you should totally watch the video.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously we've covered a lot more information than
Speaker 1: we covered in the video, but the videos are amazing work.
Speaker 1: I mean, Lauren does a great job with the writing
Speaker 1: team and our production crew puts it together and looks great.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah that that may or may not be
Speaker 1: out at the time that this podcast episode publishes. But
Speaker 1: you know what you do is subscribe. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: That's the ticket brain stuff, and then you'll be able
Speaker 1: to catch all the amazing videos you appear in in
Speaker 1: lots of those two I do. Indeed you can. You
Speaker 1: can see my appalling visage. It's only sometimes appalling, and
Speaker 1: only when we completely cover you in fake blood. Yeah
Speaker 1: that did happen this quote unquote fake fake blood. Yeah, hey,
Speaker 1: I helped make that blood, all right, I know it
Speaker 1: was fake. Okay, that's that's much better than the one
Speaker 1: the other way that could have gone. I helped make
Speaker 1: that blood. I was harvesting it from myself because I
Speaker 1: only trust in my own uh No. But but seriously,
Speaker 1: those those videos are phenomenal. You have not been checking
Speaker 1: them out. You have got to go see the brain
Speaker 1: stuff videos as well as the what the Stuff videos
Speaker 1: that you work on. Uh these are it's it's a
Speaker 1: direction that how stuff works has been moving in for
Speaker 1: a while and I think people are just starting to
Speaker 1: pick up on it and they are wildly informative and entertaining.
Speaker 1: So I recommend you go check those out if you
Speaker 1: have not seen them. And of course you can hear
Speaker 1: us on our sister podcast, Forward Thinking with Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: where we talk about the future sometimes as if it
Speaker 1: has already happened. If you catch caught the April Fools
Speaker 1: Day episode from this year, if you haven't, you need
Speaker 1: to go and listen to it because we had so
Speaker 1: much fun on that one. And so yeah, you check
Speaker 1: that out. Also, remember, if you have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, you can get in touch
Speaker 1: with me send me an email. The address is tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler. The hand to
Speaker 1: what all three of those is tech stuff hs W
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again. Really sick for more
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