Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio
Speaker 1: and held the tech are you? It is time for
Speaker 1: a tech Stuff classic episode. This episode you're about to
Speaker 1: hear originally published on April two thousand fifteen. It is
Speaker 1: also a part two. It's called a Series of Tubes
Speaker 1: Part two. So if you want to listen to part one,
Speaker 1: check out last Friday's classic episode and then pick up here.
Speaker 1: It's okay, I'll wait now, let's listen in de Brown
Speaker 1: with patent the cash Carrier, which was in the United States,
Speaker 1: which was an in building system for sending money throughout
Speaker 1: department stores. UM. These suckers operated for decades. UM One
Speaker 1: Philadelphia retailer Wannamaker installed a really huge system in e
Speaker 1: eighty that was just a year after they got electric lighting.
Speaker 1: I've actually seen these in department stores. Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen one of these? So there were some old department
Speaker 1: stores in um in Georgia where they still use these.
Speaker 1: And I'll talk more about, you know, the purpose of
Speaker 1: these in department stores, because I'm sure there's still quite
Speaker 1: a few that still have them um behind the scenes yea,
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 is
Speaker 1: a question that you know, that's a different question. But
Speaker 1: I've actually seen them operated, and i remember wondering how
Speaker 1: they worked. And I'm pretty sure my dad made up
Speaker 1: a completely fictional like I'm sure there were like hobbits.
Speaker 1: Ask science fiction writers to explain science. Kind of love
Speaker 1: my dad, but if he doesn't know the answer, he
Speaker 1: will be more than happy to make it up. And
Speaker 1: here's the thing, you probably knew the answer too, So
Speaker 1: at any rate, yes, in um in by by by
Speaker 1: e eighties six, the postal tube system in London stretched
Speaker 1: for thirty four miles that's about fifty four kilometers underneath
Speaker 1: the city and it was transmitting thirty two thousand messages
Speaker 1: per day. It speeds up to fifty one miles per hour,
Speaker 1: that's about eighty two kilometers per hour fast. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The mail was carried by what they referred to at
Speaker 1: the time of street tubes, which were these like two
Speaker 1: point five inch diameter tubes that were made of lead
Speaker 1: and encased in iron ducks a couple of feet beneath
Speaker 1: the street. Um. Today, some of these, like I said
Speaker 1: at the top of our previous episode, are still intact
Speaker 1: and are used to house telecom cables. Really is a
Speaker 1: series of tubes before it really is? Uh. Then in
Speaker 1: two the US Congress would authorize an investigation into this
Speaker 1: crazy nomadic mail system thing. Um. This was headed up
Speaker 1: by Postmaster General John when a Maker who is totally
Speaker 1: the same dude who owns those lines of department stores. Uh.
Speaker 1: And yeah, he would too 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 New York City would open
Speaker 1: their own pneumatic mail system that would send letters and
Speaker 1: parcels on a loop under Manhattan at a 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 Dispatched Company. Fully were the totally tubular, totally tabulary.
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 dred letters. Now keep
Speaker 1: in mind this is and remember then eight that's when
Speaker 1: Mr Beach died. That's the guy who was going to
Speaker 1: build the pneumatic tube system. Uh So, so around around
Speaker 1: that time, lots of cities started to uh to to
Speaker 1: have these crazy pneumatic tube things. Um, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: Satan Louis across the Pond, Paris, 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 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 that
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. Interesting on, on
Speaker 1: the same system, error messages could also be sent from
Speaker 1: the switchboards to the machinery rooms. So this is different
Speaker 1: from what I thought when you said that pneumatic tubes
Speaker 1: were being were helping out with telephone systems. I just
Speaker 1: imagine that you just started screaming into a tube and
Speaker 1: I hope that someone somewhere down the line could hear you.
Speaker 1: They did. Actually, I believe that they did actually have
Speaker 1: some tubes like that in some buildings, like just shout
Speaker 1: into this tube, like some of the old old ships
Speaker 1: had those right right. Yeah, they were really used in
Speaker 1: a in in naval naval capacities. But I also just
Speaker 1: love the idea of the like original four or four
Speaker 1: message being like sent on a stiff piece of paper
Speaker 1: that was just sailed along. I imagine Google will have
Speaker 1: to bring that back for him for Full's Day sometime
Speaker 1: in the future. Uh. Then in nineteen thirteen, one Waldemere Comfort, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think Valdemar comfort excellent. I'm so bad at German.
Speaker 1: You think that over the years I would have gotten
Speaker 1: better anyway. Uh. He was then the managing editor of
Speaker 1: Scientific American, and he proposed that, like, really soon, we
Speaker 1: should be delivering prepared meals to homes via pneumatic tubes.
Speaker 1: He was like, this is a direct quote. He was like,
Speaker 1: if a letter can be shot through a pneumatic tube
Speaker 1: from New 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. I'm 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 would be kind of like having the Willy Wonka gum,
Speaker 1: except that all the flavors of all the courses are
Speaker 1: delivered simultaneously. It speeds of like thirty miles per hour. U. Yeah,
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, right,
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
Speaker 1: thirties there um so so at any rate, in nineteen
Speaker 1: fourteen or by nineteen fourteen, rather some third of New
Speaker 1: York City's mail was being sent by pneumatic tube. Um.
Speaker 1: But oops, hey, that was the year that the World
Speaker 1: War broke broke out, um, And so the US Post
Speaker 1: off the suspended the pneumatic mail system on the basis
Speaker 1: of fuel preservation. Um. After the war the service would
Speaker 1: be restored, but only in New York City and Boston.
Speaker 1: The other cities of the US their pneumatic mail systems
Speaker 1: would remain dormant. Well, this does make sense. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: during the World War, you know, they're they're using motors
Speaker 1: that are running on fuel, and that fuel was very
Speaker 1: necessary to the war effort. Yeah, or or some of
Speaker 1: them were probably still running on steam engines. That's true.
Speaker 1: That's true. And I mean, even just from a labor perspective,
Speaker 1: I want to make certain that you are dedicating that
Speaker 1: labor to the efforts that are going to give you
Speaker 1: the most positive outcome from that advantage. Right. Um. Although
Speaker 1: in London those were the pneumatic mail tube systems were
Speaker 1: considered important enough to keep going. Um. They they kept
Speaker 1: their tubes running through the war. Um, especially I think
Speaker 1: because they were tied to um uh telegraphy. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they were really useful for keeping secret messages secret during
Speaker 1: the war, especially because you know, other quick communication methods
Speaker 1: could be tapped right, right, So it's obviously tapping into
Speaker 1: a pneumatic tube would be pretty difficult. You just break
Speaker 1: the tube, right, Yeah, you have to dig under a
Speaker 1: city street and break the tube and the people notice
Speaker 1: you do that. Yeah, be hard. It would be hard
Speaker 1: for you to be able to actually intercept a message
Speaker 1: at all. Just Yeah, I can understand why it would
Speaker 1: remain to a a way of sending messages in secret. However,
Speaker 1: the fact that it's a way to send messages in
Speaker 1: secret also creates a vulnerability. Yeah. Absolutely so. In the
Speaker 1: Luftwaffe specifically targeted London's pneumatic tube system. Uh. They successfully
Speaker 1: bombed out a bunch of it, and it would take
Speaker 1: about a year to recover the tube system at all,
Speaker 1: and it would not be fully restored until after the
Speaker 1: war was over. Meanwhile, over in Germany, the Berlin system
Speaker 1: was also targeted, but had didn't didn't suffer enough damage
Speaker 1: for a lot of it to be taken offline. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were parts that had to be repaired, but it
Speaker 1: largely remained operational throughout the war. Yeah. Uh. In the
Speaker 1: New York City Post Office would shut down their mail tubes,
Speaker 1: those same mail tubes that had been proposed by Beach
Speaker 1: back in the day. 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 created being the future of the subway,
Speaker 1: but still that idea 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 matic tubes a little bit
Speaker 1: inefficient by comparison. You know, you put you can put
Speaker 1: heavier thing, more things in a truck and you can
Speaker 1: drive it further distances to you more than one place,
Speaker 1: so yeah, um you could actually make multiple stops. Crazy.
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, around the same time, the CIA was busy
Speaker 1: building a really hugematic tube system on their campus in Langley,
Speaker 1: Virginia that would wind up transmitting some seven thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred messages every day. Yeah, even the n s A
Speaker 1: wasn't able to read all those. Oh we'll be right
Speaker 1: back with more of a series of tubes after these messages.
Speaker 1: By nineteen sixty two, London would also shut down its
Speaker 1: street tube system. Uh and in nineteen seventy six for
Speaker 1: Lynn would shut theirs down as well. There's was pretty big.
Speaker 1: If you lined up all the tubes into end, you
Speaker 1: would have about two miles of them. That's about four
Speaker 1: hundred kilometers. And like we said, you know, this one
Speaker 1: was one that was built in sixty five, made it
Speaker 1: all the way through nineteen seventy six and even survived
Speaker 1: those World Wars mostly intact. So that's pretty pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: The Paris system would last until seven The pairs the
Speaker 1: Pair system, by the way, it was named the carts
Speaker 1: Nemadiq a k A. The new Oh your French I
Speaker 1: love you so so dearly. By nine, even the CIA
Speaker 1: would give up the pneumatic ghost as email began hitting
Speaker 1: the scene. And now with the n s A, I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're regretting that decision. Well, yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: In the UK, the government may still be using pneumatic tubes.
Speaker 1: It's latest two thousand three. There's a written record of
Speaker 1: messages being sent between ten Downing Street and then the
Speaker 1: Foreign Office by pneumatic tube, like like right alongside fancy
Speaker 1: encrypted computer system. And I know it's still a new
Speaker 1: is in the Norwegian parliamentary buildings because I watched a
Speaker 1: really cool video. So there's a video on YouTube and
Speaker 1: it's it is Norwegian. There speaking Norwegian, I cannot understand Norwegians,
Speaker 1: so I do not know what the description is. I
Speaker 1: assume it's an explanation of what is about to happen,
Speaker 1: but probably not saying like this entire video is lies.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that's probably not the case. But in this
Speaker 1: in this video, they have a canister that's outfitted on
Speaker 1: one end with a go pro and a light. So
Speaker 1: the light obviously is necessary because they want to capture
Speaker 1: what it looks like if you were to go through
Speaker 1: one of these neumatic tubes, but you need the light
Speaker 1: because it's gonna be dark in there. So they have
Speaker 1: someone from Parliament I assume, set the canister into one
Speaker 1: of the devices. They look like a T M S.
Speaker 1: I'll talk more about that in just a second, But
Speaker 1: they program where it needs to go, you know, they
Speaker 1: select the destination, they hit the butt, and it gets
Speaker 1: pulled up into the pneumatic system and starts rocketing through
Speaker 1: all those pipes. So you can actually watch the journey
Speaker 1: and it takes a you know, a minute or so
Speaker 1: for it to get from where they sent it to
Speaker 1: its destination. Uh. And I think they even said it
Speaker 1: so that it hit a place and then had to
Speaker 1: backtrack some because at least that's would It looked like
Speaker 1: they definitely went through some sort of sorting system at
Speaker 1: least once, which is kind of cool, Like it's not
Speaker 1: just a straight shot, which would have been you know,
Speaker 1: I've been like it looks tonnel. Yeah, this was a
Speaker 1: little more exciting. It also looks pretty rough, like there's
Speaker 1: a lot of clattering around you, which makes you think like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but based on this principle, might not have been the
Speaker 1: most gentle of rides um but still pretty awesome. And uh,
Speaker 1: and keep an eye out on Facebook and Twitter probably
Speaker 1: and and tumbler. I'll send out a link to the
Speaker 1: video because it is pretty interesting to watch, even if
Speaker 1: you don't understand Norwegian. But that also leads us to
Speaker 1: a discussion about how pneumatic tubes are being used today.
Speaker 1: You know, in the UK, may be used for government
Speaker 1: purposes in Norway as well, maybe in the US government,
Speaker 1: particularly in more secretive circles. Kind of hard to say.
Speaker 1: They don't really advertise that so secret they do not. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that part. They advertise that they are being secretive, just
Speaker 1: not how they're doing it. Um. So in order to
Speaker 1: really talk about this, one of the things I saw
Speaker 1: and I thought I had to bring it up because
Speaker 1: you know, Lauren was on the show to talk about coffee.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the last time I was here, we were
Speaker 1: talking about how coffee machines were. Yeah, and as it
Speaker 1: turns out, there was a pneumatic system that's very closely
Speaker 1: tied to coffee, and I thought i'd bring that up.
Speaker 1: There's actually a video about this too, although it's not
Speaker 1: quite as harrowing as they journey through the pneumatic tube
Speaker 1: bought the go pro. So there's a company, it's called
Speaker 1: the Roasting Plant, and it's a coffee company that has
Speaker 1: store wars in New York City. When I was the
Speaker 1: video dated to a time when they only had a
Speaker 1: store in Manhattan. But I've seen the plural used to
Speaker 1: describe their stores now, so I've seen there more than one. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they have something called the Java Bot. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: here's what the java bot does. You get? They actually
Speaker 1: have green coffee beans, so they right, so these are
Speaker 1: unrested trees exactly, and so you know, once you've dried
Speaker 1: them in everything and then the whole thing. You can
Speaker 1: learn more about that in our episode about how coffee
Speaker 1: machines were. Yeah, we go into the tail because there's
Speaker 1: a subject we're passionate about. It's coffee. Uh. So you
Speaker 1: 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 on 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 machine 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 cop think.
Speaker 1: I would think that roasting them that fast would have
Speaker 1: to be at temperatures that you don't really want to
Speaker 1: just burn the beans. So my guess is that they
Speaker 1: roast them and then what happens is when you order
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee for the first ones that had
Speaker 1: gone through, that's that process are the ones served up
Speaker 1: 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 an important time stampically 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, you're
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 of drugs, there's
Speaker 1: a high need for security with these systems. 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 could take some
Speaker 1: sensitive information about a particular person, whatever the reason, you
Speaker 1: would not want that to happen. So a lot of
Speaker 1: these systems also have security measures in place so that
Speaker 1: you 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 and
Speaker 1: it would say like a secure carrier. Um. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know is in the system, and to retrieve it you
Speaker 1: would have to put in the pen or you might
Speaker 1: have to scan like a badge. So let's say that
Speaker 1: Lauren and I work in the same hospital, and I
Speaker 1: want to send Lauren some some information. I could make
Speaker 1: sure to pick her from a list specifically to to
Speaker 1: me exactly. You would swipe your badge and you'd be
Speaker 1: the only person capable of retrieving that particular uh whatever
Speaker 1: canister and in in a hospital. Obviously, cutting down on
Speaker 1: the amount of time it takes to deal with this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff is a huge benefit both to the
Speaker 1: patient and to the hospital itself. So you can understand
Speaker 1: 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 and even with that team of twenty people. They
Speaker 1: were frequently short staffed, which is, you know, really bad
Speaker 1: news when the freshness of the samples um or the
Speaker 1: immediacy of the results are are important to a patient's
Speaker 1: health and welfare. According to Stanford, the system as of
Speaker 1: now ish hosts a hundred in twenty four stations. Every
Speaker 1: nursing unit has its own. There are onety one transfer units,
Speaker 1: nine nine interzone connectors, and twenty nine blowers um to
Speaker 1: alert employees to the arrival of the containers. The system
Speaker 1: has more than three dozen different combinations of chimes. I
Speaker 1: can only imagine what it's like learning what each chime
Speaker 1: is signifying. You're like, oh no, no, no, honey, that
Speaker 1: was beat beat boop, bet boop boop. Right, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not for you. If you are hearing two boops, don't
Speaker 1: even bother. Yeah that was highway to hell you're looking
Speaker 1: for staywad close to totally unrelated. One one is much
Speaker 1: faster to a very undesirable location. The other one takes
Speaker 1: a lot more effort, but you love being there. Just
Speaker 1: think of it in those sense you'll be fine. But
Speaker 1: these these canistries that they use can can go up
Speaker 1: to eighteen miles per hour which means that even at
Speaker 1: peak use of the system, which can which can get
Speaker 1: very busy, it only takes about three minutes for a
Speaker 1: package to transfer the longest route in the system, which
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. I mean, if you've ever been in
Speaker 1: one of these huge hospitals, you have to realize that
Speaker 1: if you were to physically give this to someone and
Speaker 1: have them running across a campus, yeah, and and take
Speaker 1: elevators or stairs. I mean these these buildings can be
Speaker 1: gargantu like if you ever go to um like here's
Speaker 1: an example in Atlanta, Great Memorial Hospital is an enormous
Speaker 1: beast of a building. Hey, I've always wanted to do this.
Speaker 1: It's Jonathan, and uh after these messages will be right back.
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 tear defies 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. As 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: Just don just loose machine parts rattling through tubes. I
Speaker 1: would hope not that would be even more terrifying. Um.
Speaker 1: But I mean I'm sure it's not like a like
Speaker 1: a civic worth of gravel that you're sending at the
Speaker 1: station you Yeah, And and it's probably on wheeld system
Speaker 1: similar to what the dispatch system in London was that
Speaker 1: wasn't you know, those weren't just giant canisters either. Those
Speaker 1: were the wheeled carts that were still pushed pneumatically. But um,
Speaker 1: we're running along on rails. Uh. So. Also, we talked
Speaker 1: earlier and in the first episode we talked about the
Speaker 1: department stores using these two um to transport money, and
Speaker 1: so I was going to talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about that and the way I saw it. So there
Speaker 1: were two things I saw them used for. I saw
Speaker 1: them used when someone would write a check at a
Speaker 1: department store. Instead of storing the check at the cashier's desk,
Speaker 1: they would go ahead and put it into one of
Speaker 1: these canisters put through the numatic tube system to be
Speaker 1: put to the processing center inside inside the same store,
Speaker 1: but on a level that customers never went to because
Speaker 1: it was the office level. And then there were also
Speaker 1: times whenever you were using really um large bills that
Speaker 1: you know, the cashier would not want to have that
Speaker 1: at his or her station. Yeah, you don't want to
Speaker 1: have a lot of high bills at a point where
Speaker 1: you're going to be interacting with customers a lot, especially
Speaker 1: a point where you might have to leave the desk,
Speaker 1: you know. The responsible thing. The thing that department stores
Speaker 1: wanted was to get that that big, big money away
Speaker 1: from the point of contact with customers and into the
Speaker 1: central processing area, which you can do by shooting it
Speaker 1: through p neumatic too. And then occasionally you would have
Speaker 1: the people over at the central unit create change. So
Speaker 1: if it was something like you're using a hundred dollar
Speaker 1: bill to buy a three dollar item. Then they might
Speaker 1: they might not have the change at the cashier, but
Speaker 1: they would end up being able to do that over
Speaker 1: in the central area and then put it back in
Speaker 1: 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, Gainsville, Georgia, not Florida.
Speaker 1: And yep, there was you know, people are like, oh, Gainsville,
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 delivery system to
Speaker 1: get either like deposit slips or retrieve things whatever, and
Speaker 1: that's where the pneumatic tube system would come in. So
Speaker 1: those would be the places where I've seen them in action. Uh,
Speaker 1: And of course I've heard about them in other places,
Speaker 1: but like I want them to be here, Like I
Speaker 1: think we need to have pneumatic tubes. Oh 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 have 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
Speaker 1: bank like inside of a single building. I had no
Speaker 1: idea that they spread throughout cities. Yeah, it's such a
Speaker 1: such an interesting engineering way to get around the problem
Speaker 1: of how do you deliver mail in a dense urban
Speaker 1: environment 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. That wraps up a series of tubes, a
Speaker 1: pair of classic tech Stuff episodes from Hope you enjoyed.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for topics I should cover, or
Speaker 1: maybe updates I need to do on certain older episodes,
Speaker 1: feel free to get in touch with me on Twitter
Speaker 1: handle for the show is tech Stuff hs W and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
Speaker 1: an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.