Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: dot com. Welcome to text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm Laurence. Lauren has come back to talk with us
Speaker 1: about a subject you You wrote a script for a
Speaker 1: video series week Yeah, over on brain Stuff. I'm one
Speaker 1: of the writers, our illustrious writing the team's team of writers.
Speaker 1: They're they're amazing. They're the ones who make me sound
Speaker 1: good as otherwise I sound like this. No, you make
Speaker 1: you sound good, thank you. But yeah, we decided to
Speaker 1: do an episode on pneumatics too. Yeah, and I was
Speaker 1: the one who wrote that thing, and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a two minute video. Uh, this isn't really
Speaker 1: covering everything I think there is to say about pneumatic tubes.
Speaker 1: So Jonathan, why don't we do a tech stuff episode
Speaker 1: about right instead of a two minute video, We're going
Speaker 1: to make a two part episode because we have ten
Speaker 1: pages of notes. I think I think that that is
Speaker 1: officially the most notes we have ever compiled on anything,
Speaker 1: except for maybe D M C A or A T
Speaker 1: and T or one of those big like three parts. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those those definitely get pretty intense. But it was interesting
Speaker 1: that we can actually because you think pneumatic tubes, especially
Speaker 1: people who have have had any kind of uh interaction
Speaker 1: with these, like a drive through bank teller type thing,
Speaker 1: You wouldn't think that would necessarily end up being Yeah,
Speaker 1: but as it turns out, one, it's super cool. I'm fascinating, Yes,
Speaker 1: and to it there's a rich history, oh yeah, of
Speaker 1: being used in lots of different ways. So one of
Speaker 1: the cool things that you brought to light is that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know that these are not just little systems that
Speaker 1: are used within like that bank that drive a single
Speaker 1: building to take your bank receipt to the teller when
Speaker 1: you don't feel like getting out of your car, right,
Speaker 1: That these actually used to be and in some cases
Speaker 1: maybe still are much more extensive. Yeah. See, there used
Speaker 1: to be these huge networks of tubes buried beneath the
Speaker 1: cities that let people send messages to each other faster
Speaker 1: than ever before. Yeah, I've heard of this the Internet.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a series of tubes. Uh no, No,
Speaker 1: before before the Internet are pannet but that was only
Speaker 1: like three computers and it was it was wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pneumatic tubes date back quite a ways. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: when when Lauren said, we're going to talk about a
Speaker 1: series of tubes. I thought we were going to talk
Speaker 1: about the whole you know, good old Senator Ted from
Speaker 1: Alaska talking about how the Internet is a series of tubes, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, just for the record, I think is
Speaker 1: a decent analogy. Yeah, yeah, I mean it was. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is funny, but it was. And also, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, some telecom cables are currently being housed in
Speaker 1: old neumatic tubes, so it is yeah, awesome. So what
Speaker 1: exactly is a pneumatic tube. Well, it is a pipeline
Speaker 1: that uses air pressure to move a canister from one
Speaker 1: point to another. Okay, that seems pretty simple. So like
Speaker 1: it seems pretty simple, but wait, there's more, uh there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, these things have come a very long way
Speaker 1: as technology has advanced up. Motors have advanced. Motors started existing,
Speaker 1: Like like electricity wasn't really a thing when nematic tubes
Speaker 1: started up. Computers happened, right, And actually you might think, well,
Speaker 1: computers would end up, you know, making the whole purpose
Speaker 1: of these things obsolete, but that's not the case. In fact,
Speaker 1: there's still very high tech pneumatic tube systems that are
Speaker 1: at play in various locations for good reasons, And it
Speaker 1: turns out that the computers aren't necessary elements in that
Speaker 1: in order to be kind of like traffic control. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of cool that this thing that we would
Speaker 1: normally think was replaced by computers is actually complementing them
Speaker 1: in specific use cases. Obviously, if you want to send
Speaker 1: a message to your friend across town, you're more likely
Speaker 1: to either drop a letter in the mail or much
Speaker 1: more likely to send the message. But there are many
Speaker 1: important uses for pneumatic tubes. Um. We only get into
Speaker 1: many of those later. First, let us talk specifically about
Speaker 1: how pneumatic tubes work. Yeah, let's talk about the physics
Speaker 1: what is going on with a pneumatic tube? And so
Speaker 1: walk me through the you wrote. You've you've described an
Speaker 1: excellent way of thinking through this so that we have
Speaker 1: a logical progression to get to the actual mechanics of
Speaker 1: pneumatic tubes. Okay, So, pneumatic, in case you don't know,
Speaker 1: means works via pressurized gas. Basically, Um, So the air
Speaker 1: around us seems pretty thin, right, but it's actually a soup.
Speaker 1: It's actually a liquid made up of lightweight atoms and
Speaker 1: particles like nitrogen and oxygen and argon and carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: and ozone and dust bunnies and et cetera. Yeah, yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: And that soup is at pretty much constant density and
Speaker 1: pressure around us while we're walking around on Earth's surface,
Speaker 1: though it's a little bit thinner. The further away from
Speaker 1: sea level you get, right, Right, the higher you climb
Speaker 1: on a mountain, for example, the less dense the air.
Speaker 1: Thus you have let lower air pressure at those altitudes. Right.
Speaker 1: And it's useful to think about that because one great
Speaker 1: way of thinking about air pressure and how it helps
Speaker 1: stuff work is by thinking of how your ears pop
Speaker 1: when you go up in a really tall elevator or
Speaker 1: or up a mountain or up in an airplane. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's because your your ears pop because of the
Speaker 1: density of the air outside of your body being lower
Speaker 1: than the density of the air in your ears. Okay,
Speaker 1: You've got this little tube of air in your in
Speaker 1: your head called the station tube, and it lets your
Speaker 1: it lets your ear drum vibrate, which is important for
Speaker 1: your ear drum to function. Right. That's what allows you
Speaker 1: to interpret sound, right, because sound is a physical uh phenomenon.
Speaker 1: It vibrates the ear drum, which makes some celia go, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that signals the brain that exactly. Yeah, we're just gonna
Speaker 1: re enact once more with feeling line by line, But no,
Speaker 1: it does. You know. The ear drum is what ends
Speaker 1: up causing these other bones in your in your ear
Speaker 1: to move in such a way that celia inside of
Speaker 1: this one container, uh, start to vibrate fluctuate, and that
Speaker 1: sends electrical signals to your brain, which then is interpreted
Speaker 1: as sound. So without that vibration, you don't hear, uh,
Speaker 1: And without this tube you wouldn't get that vibration. That
Speaker 1: would have nothing to vibrate against. It would just be
Speaker 1: all solid meat and that doesn't vibrate as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean sound can travel through solids, but it's not
Speaker 1: as effective going from air to solid then from solid
Speaker 1: to solid, so right, you know it's important. So the
Speaker 1: C station tube is shut off with muscles that are
Speaker 1: tied into your mouth, throat swallowing muscles. This is one
Speaker 1: of those things I always thought was weird that that
Speaker 1: our ears are connected to I mean, the human bodies
Speaker 1: gross y'all, especially the sinus type system. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: that's why if you swallow, you hear like a tiny
Speaker 1: little pop, and that is the muscles of that tube
Speaker 1: opening up and and letting a fresh supply of air in,
Speaker 1: which is important because the air that gets into the
Speaker 1: tube gets absorbed by the walls of the tube, and
Speaker 1: so it needs to be replenished periodically. That's also why
Speaker 1: your head hurts so much when when you have a cold,
Speaker 1: because those muscles get stuffed up by gunk and you
Speaker 1: can't replenish that air supply and everything hurt. When you're
Speaker 1: like I can't hear because I have a cold, it
Speaker 1: seems weird because yeah, yeah, that's because the because your
Speaker 1: ear drum literally cannot vibe rate because there's not a
Speaker 1: replenishment of air in the tube. That's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, I had never thought of it that way.
Speaker 1: So interesting. Okay, so all of this is a sidebar promise.
Speaker 1: We're getting back to neumatics. Um. So, so as you
Speaker 1: gain altitude, the air inside of your ears starts exerting
Speaker 1: pressure on those membranes. Um, it starts pushing because it's
Speaker 1: at that higher density than the air outside. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: it wants to be chill like that lower pressure air.
Speaker 1: You never let it hang loose. Yeah, when you create
Speaker 1: this pressure differential than there. That's where you're starting to
Speaker 1: get that feeling of something's just kind of like you
Speaker 1: get that ache. You can get pretty painful too, if
Speaker 1: you especially like you know, you hear about babies and
Speaker 1: kids having real problems because they haven't figured out how
Speaker 1: to voluntarily open up their irustration tube. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: when the difference in pressure is great enough that you
Speaker 1: either volunteerly or involuntarily open up that illustration tube, that
Speaker 1: the sudden release of that pressurized air is pretty forceful
Speaker 1: and creates that pop. That's when your um But that
Speaker 1: is just one example of pressure at work around us. Uh.
Speaker 1: This next one that I've got for you is a
Speaker 1: little bit more technical. Are you ready? Yeah? Okay, straws
Speaker 1: like what the pig built his house out of drinking
Speaker 1: straw Okay, so crazy straws in my case, but yeah,
Speaker 1: sure sure, crazy straws totally. So you're not technically pulling
Speaker 1: liquid up through a straw. You're you're creating an opportunity
Speaker 1: for the liquid to push itself up. So I'm motivating
Speaker 1: the liquid that you're motivating the liquid. Yeah, exactly. The
Speaker 1: section that you apply with your mouth creates an area
Speaker 1: of low pressure at the top of the straw, which
Speaker 1: means that the relatively high pressure liquid at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the straw pushes a sip of your drink up
Speaker 1: into your mouth. Well, this is really interesting to me
Speaker 1: because I talked about a similar thing with Josh Clark
Speaker 1: when we covered how toilets work, because we had to
Speaker 1: talk about siphoning and the siphoning and uses a similar
Speaker 1: principle and it does require this difference in pressure as well.
Speaker 1: So very interesting. So how does this compared to say,
Speaker 1: pneumatic tubes. Well, it's it's basically the same thing. Um.
Speaker 1: The the tube part is air tight like a straw,
Speaker 1: except it has sealable hatches at either end instead of
Speaker 1: you know straw. Bit's yeah. Um, so so you you
Speaker 1: put a canister in one hatch. Yeah, it helps a
Speaker 1: whole lot off. The canister has some kind of like
Speaker 1: flexible skirts on either end, the concealed to the interior
Speaker 1: edges of the tube. That air is not passing around
Speaker 1: around the canister right to make it the most effective.
Speaker 1: So you so you put your canister in there, you
Speaker 1: close the hatch, and you press your go button. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: on the other end of the tube, pressing that button
Speaker 1: will open up a vent and start a motor. Now
Speaker 1: one of two things will happen at this point, right,
Speaker 1: So this all depends upon where the canister is in
Speaker 1: relation to where the blower is. So here's the boring one,
Speaker 1: because because you get to take the really cool one.
Speaker 1: Here's the boring one if the canister is on the
Speaker 1: blower side. So in other words, this is like the
Speaker 1: blower being a fan essentially that can either blow air
Speaker 1: into the tube or pull air out of the tube
Speaker 1: if it's on the blower side, and the only way
Speaker 1: to move the canister to the other end of the
Speaker 1: tube is to blow air against the canister pushing it,
Speaker 1: so you're increasing the air pressure on the side of
Speaker 1: the blower and it just blows the canister across. So
Speaker 1: this is essentially the same as when you shoot blow
Speaker 1: darts at your coworkers, or when I say you when
Speaker 1: I shoot blow darts at Ben bowling, Um, he has
Speaker 1: wondered what that tingling sensation has been and no one
Speaker 1: tell him. But that's essentially it. So yeah, but if
Speaker 1: the canisters on the opposite side, see, the blower on
Speaker 1: a pneumatic tube system typically is at just one end.
Speaker 1: You don't have two blowers right right, And it's not um.
Speaker 1: Especially classically, these things weren't always powerful enough to necessarily
Speaker 1: push at right. So if the canisters on the opposite end,
Speaker 1: like I, I've sent something out now, I'm expecting it
Speaker 1: to come back, but my blower is at the the
Speaker 1: end where I am at, I have to I have
Speaker 1: to find a different way to move the canster. I
Speaker 1: can't push it by by turning the fan to blow
Speaker 1: air into the tube. So what do I do then? Well,
Speaker 1: the motor will still drive a fan down at the
Speaker 1: other end of the tube, but but this time it
Speaker 1: will start to pull air out of the tube, venting
Speaker 1: it out of the tube entirely. Got okay, This section,
Speaker 1: just like a straw, creates a partial vacuum at that
Speaker 1: end of the tube with the fan an area of
Speaker 1: low pressure. So uh, you know, down down at the
Speaker 1: canister end of the tube, the higher pressure air behind
Speaker 1: the canister wants to expand to settle the difference, right, um,
Speaker 1: So it will push the canister through the two So
Speaker 1: the cancer is still being pushed. It's just that it's
Speaker 1: being pushed because the air behind it is at a
Speaker 1: higher pressure. Than the air in front of it, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's so cool. So in most of these systems, when
Speaker 1: the canister reaches its destination um like the end of
Speaker 1: the tube, it will trigger a trapdoor to close behind it,
Speaker 1: which will also que the motor to turn off end
Speaker 1: the vnced close, meaning that the partial vacuum that's been
Speaker 1: created in the tube will be broken and your buddy
Speaker 1: at the other end can open up the hatch and
Speaker 1: take out the canister. And that makes perfect sense because
Speaker 1: obviously if you had continue to have that vacuum they're
Speaker 1: opening up the hatch would have been difficult, it real hard, yeah,
Speaker 1: because that that air pressure on the outside of the
Speaker 1: tube is pushing against it. You know. It's this same
Speaker 1: sort of deal. That's just one of those things that
Speaker 1: you have to have all the lower parts in place
Speaker 1: for the system to work properly. And the big advantage
Speaker 1: of this sort of system is that you don't have
Speaker 1: to connect little motors to all those canisters, right. The
Speaker 1: individual units don't need anything, they don't need any moving parts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole the system is a whole can have a
Speaker 1: single well, it can have a single motor. A lot
Speaker 1: of the time these days they've got really complex multiple
Speaker 1: motor things going on, especially if you have like lots
Speaker 1: of potential destinations. But but if you had a very
Speaker 1: simple system where it was just an out and back,
Speaker 1: you would just need one one motor turning one fan
Speaker 1: or or you know, some people just refer to him
Speaker 1: as air compressors, but technically you're using a fan anything fan. Yeah. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. And there are also some interesting advantages
Speaker 1: or rather design elements that have been made to make
Speaker 1: sure that the canisters arrived safely, right, because in the
Speaker 1: original systems, canisters would arrive by basically just crashing into
Speaker 1: the opposite end of the two Yeah, they and they
Speaker 1: could be going pretty darn fast, depending on how powerful
Speaker 1: that fan was. Yeah, tens of miles an hour, which
Speaker 1: which I mean usually I say is kind of a joke,
Speaker 1: but actually that's pretty quick, Yeah, especially for something like
Speaker 1: if you haven't designed it just right, it's gonna you know,
Speaker 1: just just smash it up, yeah, or it's gonna end
Speaker 1: up causing damage to the tubes. And obviously that's a problem.
Speaker 1: So there are a couple of different ways of slowing
Speaker 1: them down properly. One of those uses air brakes, which
Speaker 1: is essentially just again pressurized air, but now on the
Speaker 1: low pressure side, so that can slow down the canister
Speaker 1: from you know, it's it's inevitable crash towards oblivion, or
Speaker 1: bumpers like little rubber bumpers that can come out from
Speaker 1: the sides to slow like the way a lot of
Speaker 1: roller coaster brakes work. Huh. And also they often have
Speaker 1: some form of switch that once a castor passes that switch,
Speaker 1: it activates it, which then turns off power to the blower. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: momentum still a thing, so you have to plan for
Speaker 1: that as well. But yeah, yeah, it's sort of like
Speaker 1: the trapdoor idea, but with a little bit of a
Speaker 1: longer glide after the trapdoor. Right, So now I'm going
Speaker 1: to try and explain without the use of visual aids,
Speaker 1: how how a simple pneumatic tube system using a couple
Speaker 1: of valves and a switch would help a canister come
Speaker 1: to a stop. All right, So, uh, you've got with
Speaker 1: the two valves. These create a pathway for air in
Speaker 1: front of the canister to vent out for most of
Speaker 1: the trip, while leaving enough for the very end to
Speaker 1: act as a cushion. So in other words, you need
Speaker 1: a way for air to vent outward or else you'll
Speaker 1: never create that area of low pressure. But you need
Speaker 1: a way to keep a little bit of air in
Speaker 1: there so that it can act as a breaking system.
Speaker 1: So you've got to figure out how to do that.
Speaker 1: And when I saw there was a a series of
Speaker 1: illustrations I saw online that explained this really well. And
Speaker 1: uh so I'm going to try and walk you through
Speaker 1: it the best way I know how. So we're playing
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons, y'all, and here's here's what's happening. So
Speaker 1: your adventurer is in a tunnel and behind you as
Speaker 1: a giant spinning fan of death. Oh yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I've been on this module before. Okay, So in this case,
Speaker 1: the giant spinning fan of death is currently slow. It's
Speaker 1: it's actually not even moving at all. It's it's no
Speaker 1: one's tripped that trap yet. You start walking down the tunnel.
Speaker 1: So the fan is behind you and you just have
Speaker 1: a big, expansive tunnel in front of you. Now, as
Speaker 1: you walk down the tunnel, you see that there is
Speaker 1: a split from the tunnel off let's say to your left,
Speaker 1: and it's just a second, smaller tunnel that you seek
Speaker 1: kick down the door. No, no, no, there's no door.
Speaker 1: It's just just an open it's just an opening. But
Speaker 1: but I like your initiative. You didn't even have to
Speaker 1: roll for it, all right. But you continue on down
Speaker 1: and you come to your first actual door in that
Speaker 1: main tunnel. Now you can do your kicking, and it
Speaker 1: works because that door will only open outward into the
Speaker 1: main hall. This is a valve, and it's a one
Speaker 1: way valve, right, so air can go from the fan
Speaker 1: through the main pipe, but it can't be sucked back
Speaker 1: this way, got it. So if airs, if airs being pulled,
Speaker 1: that door slam shut and nothing, not even your mighty
Speaker 1: kick will open it. So since there are no differentials
Speaker 1: in air pressure, your kick opens the door. You continue
Speaker 1: down the hall. I'm gonna skip the cobalt encounter. As
Speaker 1: you continue down the tunnel, you see a door on
Speaker 1: your left. Now, this door is the other valve. This
Speaker 1: is the valve, that is the bypass valve. And in fact,
Speaker 1: if you were to kick down that door, but you
Speaker 1: can do oh ah, yeah, I kicked down the door. Excellent.
Speaker 1: So the door opens inward into that secondary tunnel. There's
Speaker 1: no bugbears there is an al bear, but he's currently
Speaker 1: on break. So you kick down the door. UH. That
Speaker 1: opens the pathway to the bypass UH top tube or
Speaker 1: bypass pipe. So the first tunnel that you passed way
Speaker 1: back when on the left, it's the same it's that
Speaker 1: same pathway. So this door will only open when air
Speaker 1: is being pulled through back towards the fans speak suck
Speaker 1: back toward the fan. So that way you always have
Speaker 1: one valve that's open and one valve that's closed, and
Speaker 1: it all depends upon air flow. So there's no mechanical
Speaker 1: or electrical need to to change these valves. It's just
Speaker 1: the airflow that does it automatically. So if the air
Speaker 1: flow is being pulled back, the bypass valve is open,
Speaker 1: the main valve is shut, and because the bypass pipe
Speaker 1: completely bypasses that main valve, air can still flow through.
Speaker 1: So now we're going to have to use a an
Speaker 1: example to talk about what happens when the canister comes by.
Speaker 1: So the canister starts rocketing down the path toward the
Speaker 1: fan side, so air is being pulled through. It ends
Speaker 1: up passing a switch. That switch tells the fan to
Speaker 1: stop blowing by. Of course, that's going to take a
Speaker 1: little time. So the cancer continues down towards the pathway.
Speaker 1: The canister ends up passing that bypass valve which is open.
Speaker 1: So once the canistor is cleared the bypass valve, because
Speaker 1: you have an air tight seal between the main valve
Speaker 1: and the canister, that air between the two starts to
Speaker 1: get compressed, and that compressed air begins to push back
Speaker 1: against the canister, slowing it down, and thus you have
Speaker 1: air brakes. That was a long way to go for
Speaker 1: that explanation, but honestly, without the use of visual aids,
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure how it is going to explain how
Speaker 1: this actually works in a way that would remotely make sense.
Speaker 1: Uh you now get two d and thirty gold pieces
Speaker 1: a piece and the princesses in another castle. Okay, okay, well,
Speaker 1: good adventure. You're welcome. I'm on a level three gamester um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So obviously, if the if the fan were switched the
Speaker 1: other way where the canstor is blowing down the the pipe,
Speaker 1: the main valve would be opened, the bypass valve would
Speaker 1: be shut, and that would be it. There would it
Speaker 1: would be no different otherwise? Uh So, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: the basic way that this works. And that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's a very very very simple version. And yeah, as
Speaker 1: as complicated as that just sounded out loud, that that
Speaker 1: is as basic as it gets. Really. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I I said a while ago that these things have
Speaker 1: been around since the eighteen fifties at least. So let
Speaker 1: us go to the way back machine and it's been
Speaker 1: out of use for so long. Kind of dusty in
Speaker 1: here this little yeah you know what, as as as
Speaker 1: cramped as this thing is, it's still cooler than Josh
Speaker 1: and Chuck Studio. I mean not not like in a
Speaker 1: style sense, I mean physically the temperature is lower. Physically, yeah, cooler, Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah that No, they they're they're pretty hot, yeah they are.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of hot guys. All right, Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: let's just where are we setting this to? Uh too?
Speaker 1: To Greece? Sure, well, okay, like ancient Greece, modern Grease. Okay,
Speaker 1: I was really hoping you were going to say Greece too,
Speaker 1: but okay, to Grease it is. Here we go. Well,
Speaker 1: we do have chills and they are multiplying, but that
Speaker 1: was Greece. One. I'm sorry, I don't remember any lyrics
Speaker 1: don't want to. It's it says a lot for you
Speaker 1: and little for me. So there was a mathematician who
Speaker 1: started writing about the concept of using pressurized guess to
Speaker 1: produce mechanical motion. I know this guy, Yeah, Hero of Alexandria,
Speaker 1: also known as Heron. He's a pretty smart dude, was
Speaker 1: he did you? You know, we talked about it. He is.
Speaker 1: Since we are here in the way back missions and
Speaker 1: he's across the street over there, he's kind of working
Speaker 1: on something else right now, Yeah, I think we're weirding
Speaker 1: about by looking at him and maybe okay, well, let's
Speaker 1: just act casual, all right, So something else that he
Speaker 1: was really known for, by the way, he was known
Speaker 1: for working with steam engines, in fact, pressurized gas. It
Speaker 1: makes sense right related He noticed that air had the
Speaker 1: ability to physically push against things, and that if you
Speaker 1: had a way of generating air movement, you know, he
Speaker 1: even thought, oh, air must be made of something because
Speaker 1: it can have a force, so very forward thinking. He
Speaker 1: didn't have the words to describe this in the way
Speaker 1: that we do today, but he understood that this had
Speaker 1: a way of doing work, and that if you could
Speaker 1: find a way to channel that, you can make air
Speaker 1: do work for you, and that gave him a lot
Speaker 1: of thought about steam, including one of my favorite proposed inventions.
Speaker 1: There's no record of it actually existing, and I think
Speaker 1: we I think we talked about this one in our
Speaker 1: episode about steam engines. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we did.
Speaker 1: This is the magical way to open temple doors. And
Speaker 1: so you start with a flaming brazure, which is a
Speaker 1: container that contains hot coals essentially, and you have that
Speaker 1: connected to a boiler. The boiler boils water, water is
Speaker 1: converted into steam. That steam goes through a long tube
Speaker 1: that's essentially a condenser tube. It condenses back into water
Speaker 1: and starts dripping into a bucket. When enough of water
Speaker 1: has dripped into that bucket, that bucket, which is suspended
Speaker 1: by a rope from a pulley, starts to get heavier
Speaker 1: and heavier pulling downward, and that pulley system ends up
Speaker 1: turning a couple of columns that open up the temple doors.
Speaker 1: So by lighting a fire and and sacrificing something to
Speaker 1: the gods, eventually the doors open and it's magic. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was pretty brilliant. He's he actually came up with
Speaker 1: a lot of different really cool ideas, um, and so
Speaker 1: you know, we definitely wanted to call him out, but
Speaker 1: then we have to skip ahead a couple of you know,
Speaker 1: like a millennia or two. You know, oh yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you know how it goes with science during some of
Speaker 1: those intervening years between telem increase and say that the Renaissance,
Speaker 1: you know, back when everyone suddenly said, hey, remember when
Speaker 1: we used to be smart. We liked that. It was great.
Speaker 1: You know, we were a lot a lot fewer of
Speaker 1: us were dying of the plague back then. We liked
Speaker 1: that time. That was good. Yeah. So a fellow by
Speaker 1: the name of Dennis Poppine, I think that's how you
Speaker 1: said that, would present a paper on an invention that
Speaker 1: he or an idea that he was calling the double
Speaker 1: pneumatic pump to the Royal Society of London. That's pretty
Speaker 1: that's pretty. That's a pretty impressive name, the double double pneumatic.
Speaker 1: It's twice as good as it isn't clearly obviously, um.
Speaker 1: But nothing more would come of this until the early
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Yeah, that's when there was a Scottish engineer
Speaker 1: by the name of William Murdoch. I have to mention
Speaker 1: William Murdock, because while while he had essentially invented the
Speaker 1: pneumatic tube, he didn't do a whole lot with it.
Speaker 1: It was some of his I hesitated to use the
Speaker 1: word like students because they weren't even apprentice to him.
Speaker 1: But people who worked within the same field, who were
Speaker 1: exposed to his ideas were able to actually implement them.
Speaker 1: But he was the one who came up with the
Speaker 1: concept of using a pneumatic tube in the early nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and others would take that idea and run with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: namely one British engineered by the name of George Medhurst.
Speaker 1: He would publish a plan in eighteen ten for a
Speaker 1: pneumatic transport system. Now let me ask you, is this
Speaker 1: the one where you like, you get in the tube
Speaker 1: and you press a button and then you just fly across.
Speaker 1: So it's not like in futurama. I know now that
Speaker 1: would hurt a lot. I don't recommend it. Yeah, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so they're downside. I mean, clearly you really need that
Speaker 1: air brake system to work really well, and your ears
Speaker 1: would pop like a mother true. Yeah, being being being
Speaker 1: subjected to extremely low pressure on one half of your
Speaker 1: body might not have the best effect overall. All right,
Speaker 1: fair enough, Okay, So so he was so he was
Speaker 1: working with a compressed air. Yeah, he actually created as
Speaker 1: something called the Alien engine in eight hundred, which was
Speaker 1: a kind of like a car running on a compressed
Speaker 1: air in a way, it was a vehicle that used
Speaker 1: compressed air on the vehicle itself to create a system
Speaker 1: of propulsion to make the vehicle move. So in this case,
Speaker 1: the the you know, like we said, with the pneumatic
Speaker 1: tube is one of the big advantages is that you
Speaker 1: have the centralized source of power. This was the other
Speaker 1: way around. This is more like more akin to a
Speaker 1: motor vehicle. So but he that was an early experiment
Speaker 1: of his that didn't necessarily work out, you know, as
Speaker 1: like this is going to be the new means of transportation.
Speaker 1: But he was recognizing the power of compressed air. So
Speaker 1: then he moved on to create a design for this
Speaker 1: pneumatic transport system. And it consisted of an iron tube
Speaker 1: that was six ft high by six ft wide, which
Speaker 1: is about one point eight meters each and I had
Speaker 1: rails along the bottom of this tube, so cars would
Speaker 1: be set on the rails and then blown through the
Speaker 1: tubes using compressed air. So essentially the style that we
Speaker 1: were talking about, the the the easy, more boring method
Speaker 1: of getting canisters from point A to point B. But
Speaker 1: he did he did note that he did the math
Speaker 1: and sussed it out and and thought that if air
Speaker 1: could be subjected to just forty pounds per square inch
Speaker 1: of pressure, just um, it's it's about two and a
Speaker 1: half times the amount that the atmosphere exerts upon us
Speaker 1: right now hanging out at sea level. Um, if we
Speaker 1: could increase that two and a half times, the air
Speaker 1: molecules could be propelled at like a thousand miles an
Speaker 1: hour or a thousand, six hundred and nine kilometers. You're welcome,
Speaker 1: Canada and else. Uh, when actually pushing stuff that is
Speaker 1: an air, that speed would only be about a hundred
Speaker 1: miles or a hundred and sixty kilometers per hour, which
Speaker 1: it's still pretty fast. Certainly in like eighteen ten was
Speaker 1: not too shabby, it's now No. Unfortunately, he would pass
Speaker 1: away before he really had a chance to implement any
Speaker 1: of these ideas, but his ideas would become instrumental for
Speaker 1: people who were working on actual implementations. Right. Yeah, So uh,
Speaker 1: one of the one of the interesting stories I came across,
Speaker 1: and I was telling Lauren before we went into the
Speaker 1: podcast studio that this, the stories of these people probably
Speaker 1: could merit a couple of episodes. Maybe I'll mention it
Speaker 1: to Stuffy miss in History because it really fits more
Speaker 1: in their line than ours. But I want to talk
Speaker 1: about Simuda and Clegg. So you had the Simuda Brothers.
Speaker 1: That was a company that was run by Jacob and
Speaker 1: Joseph Simuda who were primarily shipbuilders, so they were engineers,
Speaker 1: but they built ships. Then they partnered with another inventor
Speaker 1: and engineer named Samuel Clegg, who at one time and
Speaker 1: worked in a company that used a lot of William
Speaker 1: Murdock's inventions. So Clegg had been exposed to Murdock's ideas.
Speaker 1: Some people refer to him as as as Murdoch's student,
Speaker 1: although from all the research which I did, it didn't
Speaker 1: seem like they had a very like each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like saying Tesla worked for Edison in
Speaker 1: the sense that yes, Tesla worked for one of Edison's companies,
Speaker 1: but was not like directly associated with most of his
Speaker 1: life for Coffee with the Dude, No, especially by the
Speaker 1: time they ended up being kind of rivals. But but
Speaker 1: even in the early days they didn't. It's not like
Speaker 1: Edison knew everybody to work for him anyway. So their
Speaker 1: their idea was to lease some already constructed but unopened
Speaker 1: rail lines. So the idea was they took some rail
Speaker 1: lines that had not yet been open to the public.
Speaker 1: They had been built but not used, and they were
Speaker 1: at a place called Wormholt Scrubs, at least that's what
Speaker 1: was known by at the time. It is now known
Speaker 1: as Wormwood Scrubs two instead of one. Yeah, And they
Speaker 1: used a pipe set between the two rails as their
Speaker 1: pneumatic system. So instead of an entire huge pneumatic tube
Speaker 1: encompassing the rails, there was a smaller pneumatic tube set
Speaker 1: right in the middle of the rails, and the tube
Speaker 1: had a slot running all the way the length of
Speaker 1: the tube at the top of it. All right, So
Speaker 1: you're they had a train car that had a pole
Speaker 1: that essentially extended down into that slot and was attached
Speaker 1: at the other end inside the tube to a piston. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is like a pneumatic monorail, Yeah, exactly. The
Speaker 1: piston acted like a canister would in a normal pneumatic
Speaker 1: tube and then you sit there and think like, well,
Speaker 1: how do you create the difference in pressure if you've
Speaker 1: got to if you've got a slot all the way
Speaker 1: across the open top of this two, Yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: there's no way to seal it. So what they did
Speaker 1: was they created a leather flap that would essentially be
Speaker 1: opened immediately before and close immediately after the the rod
Speaker 1: would pass through. And uh, the the track they were
Speaker 1: using was on a very gentle slope, and so what
Speaker 1: they did was they used to push the train car
Speaker 1: up the slope to its destination and then on the
Speaker 1: return trip, they just allowed gravity to bring the car back,
Speaker 1: so you didn't have to have any sort of power
Speaker 1: to bring back the car um and it was used
Speaker 1: pretty extensively as kind of a demonstration. Uh, this sort
Speaker 1: of this kind of track was starting to get a name.
Speaker 1: Is called atmospheric railways. That's beautiful. Yeah. The reason they
Speaker 1: wanted to call it atmospheric was that, yes, they're using
Speaker 1: they're using pressurized air, but the cars themselves can be
Speaker 1: open to the air, so you're not forced inside a tunnel.
Speaker 1: Because a lot of people were worried about getting you know, claustrophobic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, not all of us do well in tunnels. Um,
Speaker 1: they can be certainly. So other atmospheric railways would follow,
Speaker 1: including some built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who we talked
Speaker 1: about on tech stuff in How Subways Work. That was
Speaker 1: the seven episode. So he was famous for a lot
Speaker 1: of reasons, one of them being that he dug the
Speaker 1: Thames Tunnel, so he really um kind of pioneered the
Speaker 1: methodology for digging tunnels safely, especially under you know, ground
Speaker 1: that you would technically think would be really unstable like
Speaker 1: the bottom of a river. Um. And one of his trains,
Speaker 1: at least from a report I read during a demonstration,
Speaker 1: hit a top speed of seventy miles per hour, which
Speaker 1: is about a hundred thirteen kilometers per hour. But keeping
Speaker 1: that seal effective even with those leather flaps was problematic,
Speaker 1: and so eventually because of these issues, the fact that
Speaker 1: you had to replace that seal often uh ended up
Speaker 1: meaning that when steam engines really started to become popular,
Speaker 1: the pneumatic train systems like these couldn't compete, and so
Speaker 1: people just started to go with steam engines that were
Speaker 1: seen as a reliable than something that you had to
Speaker 1: constantly maintain. So ultimately, um, they I was gonna say
Speaker 1: these didn't go anywhere, but that's not true. They go
Speaker 1: from one place to another place. Sure they went places,
Speaker 1: but they just didn't take off. No, No, they literally
Speaker 1: did not take literally and figuratively. Yes. Okay. Meanwhile, in
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties, telegraph systems began to really boom, um,
Speaker 1: which I mentioned a for reference and be because it's
Speaker 1: important to note that in these early days of telegraphs,
Speaker 1: you know, they it was really cool technology, um, but
Speaker 1: they were really understaffed, uh, telegraph telegraph offices, you know,
Speaker 1: because there was so much demand and most people in
Speaker 1: businesses couldn't afford to have their own telegraph machine. So
Speaker 1: central offices would send these message boys on foot through
Speaker 1: busy city blocks carrying all of these telegrams, which would
Speaker 1: kind of negate to depending on you know, like like
Speaker 1: peak capacity, the speed of of a telegraph versus a
Speaker 1: mail system. The idea of being that hey, I can
Speaker 1: send this message instantly, except I'm sending it instantly to
Speaker 1: a centralized point and then from there where someone else
Speaker 1: has to run it out to you. Anyway, So in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty three, Latimer Clark would build a non electric
Speaker 1: pneumatic tube that would carry messages between the electric and
Speaker 1: international telegraph companies headquarters and their offices at the British
Speaker 1: Stock Exchange. And yes, a lot of telegraphs were stock related.
Speaker 1: As we have talked about on the show before, stock
Speaker 1: exchanges kind of drive message technology. It's crazy the idea
Speaker 1: that you want to pounce on something as soon as possible,
Speaker 1: whether that's buying or selling. So it makes sense that
Speaker 1: they were really working to try and decrease the amount
Speaker 1: of time between a decision and when it can be
Speaker 1: acted upon. Um so as tubes Lattimer Lattimer Clark's tubes
Speaker 1: were only one way most most tubes up to this
Speaker 1: point were so in other words, once it got to
Speaker 1: its destination, it had to be carried back physically to
Speaker 1: wherever the first office. And around the same time, the
Speaker 1: Great Britain General Post Office would commission a study of
Speaker 1: Medhurst's ideas to try to to get some kind of
Speaker 1: larger postal tube system, right, something that could make the
Speaker 1: delivery of letters more efficient. Yeah, because I mean this
Speaker 1: is again we've talked about this, uh in the Subways
Speaker 1: episode in particular. We talked about it, how this is
Speaker 1: the same period where London was experiencing explosive population growth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the Industrial Revolution when suddenly there are fewer there's
Speaker 1: fewer need of farmers and there's a greater need of
Speaker 1: labor in various ways in the cities and the urban areas.
Speaker 1: So you had this migration of people into cities, plus
Speaker 1: the you know, the fact that people still make people.
Speaker 1: So there was that too going on and uh and
Speaker 1: so we have this this world where everything's getting more
Speaker 1: complicated because suddenly there's just so many more people living
Speaker 1: in the same physical space as before. Yeah. So so
Speaker 1: in the eighteen sixties, the GPO would award a contract
Speaker 1: to one tw Rammell to construct anumatic two system that
Speaker 1: could carry mail throughout London. And Ramball's done some really
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. In eighteen sixty three, RAMA would build a
Speaker 1: two foot gage pneumatic dispatch railway in central London. More
Speaker 1: and then a bit because it takes a couple of
Speaker 1: years before it opens. But in eighteen sixty four Rambles
Speaker 1: Crystal Palace pneumatic railway opened. What so, Crystal Palace is
Speaker 1: sect area in London. It's a location in London. Um,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't The pneumatic railway itself was not a
Speaker 1: crystal palace. It would have been phenomenal, right. So it
Speaker 1: ran on a track that was about six hundred yards
Speaker 1: in length, that's around five and the train cars had
Speaker 1: colored bristles to help create a seal in a ten
Speaker 1: ft diameter or a three meter diameter tunnel. So kind
Speaker 1: of similar to those flexible skirts we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: except in this case was bristly. Yeah. Uh So this
Speaker 1: massive fan would blow the carriage down onto one end
Speaker 1: of the track. Then the fan would reverse to create
Speaker 1: a partial vacuum to bring the carriage back. So it
Speaker 1: used both principles of pneumatic tubes, and a trip cost
Speaker 1: sixpence in a song or or just a sixpence. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I always think of like Oliver, you know, I think
Speaker 1: of like a dickensie and musical when I think about
Speaker 1: the stuff. In fact, I want to write one now
Speaker 1: at any rate. That's that's a good hobby next time
Speaker 1: on a very musical. Oh man, now you guys are
Speaker 1: gonna request me to never saying I know that. So
Speaker 1: it operated for just two years and depending upon whom
Speaker 1: you ask. It might or might not have intended to
Speaker 1: serve as a model for an atmospheric railway, but in
Speaker 1: a different sense, because obviously this one was completely encapsulated
Speaker 1: in the tunnel, as opposed to the ones that had
Speaker 1: the tube that ran parallel well in between the rails.
Speaker 1: So this is one the rails are completely encapsulated in
Speaker 1: the two. There are a couple of cool urban legends
Speaker 1: about what happened to this particular railway. So one says
Speaker 1: it was just sealed off, that that once it stopped
Speaker 1: being used, they sealed off the tunnel, and that in fact,
Speaker 1: there is this lone tunnel underneath London where if you
Speaker 1: were able to get access to it, you would see
Speaker 1: the tracks and even the carriage itself. There was a
Speaker 1: lady who even reported that she had found it and
Speaker 1: there were skeletons sitting in the carriage dressed in Victorian outfits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like we're shutting her down. Don't let
Speaker 1: anybody out. We're shutting off the lights and leaving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got your sixpence is long? You are on the
Speaker 1: wrong train. That sounds like a Stephen King story. Um.
Speaker 1: There's another urban legend that said the tunnel collapsed from
Speaker 1: a bomb, which trapped the carriage and some passengers in
Speaker 1: it forever like there was essentially a cave in and
Speaker 1: they were stuck and died and are entombed in the carriage.
Speaker 1: But those kind of bombs weren't really falling on London
Speaker 1: for another few decades. Yeah, that's the thing. And this
Speaker 1: this legend was circulating as early as nineteen thirty, but
Speaker 1: there was there were no bombs that were going off
Speaker 1: in the eighteen sixties at in London like like that
Speaker 1: at that time. No, And and in fact, the Blitz
Speaker 1: didn't even happen by the time this urban legend first
Speaker 1: started circulating. And so it got stronger after World War Two,
Speaker 1: I mean more because partly because people were using underground
Speaker 1: stations and and two tunnel lines as as a place
Speaker 1: to seek refuge during the Blitz. But that was just
Speaker 1: an urban legend in anyway. In eighteen sixty five, the
Speaker 1: London Pneumatic Dispatch Railway opened And this one is not
Speaker 1: meant to carry passengers, although I think someone wrote it
Speaker 1: the first time it opened. But the yeah, again, like
Speaker 1: that would hurt Yeah, I think so too. The cars themselves, Uh,
Speaker 1: I was reading one description, it was said they were
Speaker 1: coffin sized. Yeah, so you they're not meant to carry people.
Speaker 1: But but freight and mail right that this is part
Speaker 1: of the mail system. Uh. And this comes directly from
Speaker 1: the pall Mall Gazette on October twelfth, eighteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: And you know it's in England. Okay, do it? Do it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: The driving power is at hlban and consists of two
Speaker 1: twenty four horsepower steam engines. They set in motion a disc,
Speaker 1: the diameter of which is about twenty two ft. The
Speaker 1: immense circular fan revolves with great rapidity in an air chamber,
Speaker 1: creating an almost irresistible atmosphere power which but the use
Speaker 1: of valves, can be used either for blowing the trains
Speaker 1: through the tubes or literally sucking them back again. So
Speaker 1: there you go, good show, Thank you, thank you. Yeah
Speaker 1: that was when I read that description. I was just
Speaker 1: so enchanted by the I was like, and atible atmosphere
Speaker 1: of power with such great rapidity, So I was, oh,
Speaker 1: how British this this newspaper is. But yeah, very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: back on the telegraph, and in eighteen sixty eight, the
Speaker 1: UK government would pass the Telegraphs Act, which nationalized the
Speaker 1: telegraph industry and wrapped it into the Post Office, thus
Speaker 1: meaning that the g p O acquired like really quite
Speaker 1: a lot of pneumatic telegraph lines which various companies had
Speaker 1: been privately building out over the past decade. Now this
Speaker 1: is also interesting because again it mirrors what happened with
Speaker 1: the subway system in London. The subways were built by
Speaker 1: private companies, so you had a bunch of different independent
Speaker 1: systems that were not connected together at first, until the
Speaker 1: government realized that this was a serious public good good
Speaker 1: and that you know, they wanted to help it out
Speaker 1: as much as possible and conform everything so that it
Speaker 1: could be used as widely as possible. Exactly the same. Yeah. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: across the Pond eight seventy an inventor by the name
Speaker 1: of Alfred ELI. Beach begins construction on a pneumatic subway
Speaker 1: in New York called the Beach Pneumatic Transit, obviously named
Speaker 1: after the inventor. The subway did not transport commuters to
Speaker 1: a magical New York beach sadly, but here's some interesting
Speaker 1: and odd facts about that project. So first, Beach lied
Speaker 1: about what he was doing I read somewhere that, um
Speaker 1: that he had like personal disagreements with one of the
Speaker 1: powers that were at the time, someone by the aim
Speaker 1: of Boss Tweed. Oh well, here's the thing. Originally Boss
Speaker 1: Tweed backed Beach, but Boss Tweed fail fell from favor
Speaker 1: quite famously through corruption, and then after the fact Beach
Speaker 1: said he was one of the men who stood in
Speaker 1: my way. He changed the story, and people said okay
Speaker 1: and went along with the story because they wanted to.
Speaker 1: They wanted this system to be put in place, but
Speaker 1: it ended up not being enough because there were other
Speaker 1: issues that would follow. But yeah, originally Beach and Buss
Speaker 1: Tweed were buddy buddy, and it was only after the
Speaker 1: fact when when Boss Tweeds going down Beaches like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not going down with you like that guy was
Speaker 1: always a pain in the butt. So so Beach really
Speaker 1: wanted to create this subway system, um, and you know,
Speaker 1: in order to do that, he would have to dig
Speaker 1: up part of a New York street. He knew that
Speaker 1: Tweed would not be excited about this thing. So he
Speaker 1: was like, well, what if I were building a nomadic
Speaker 1: male system. Yeah, you know what, we need a couple
Speaker 1: of couple pneumatic tubes. Want to send mail one way
Speaker 1: one to bring mail back the other way. Clearly we
Speaker 1: can't have both going the same tube because if messages
Speaker 1: need to be sent in both directions or it's not
Speaker 1: gonna work. Yeah, dogs and cats. So what we need
Speaker 1: to do is have two tubes. And so they said,
Speaker 1: all right, that that proposal we can get behind you
Speaker 1: can you can build your your male pneumatic tubes. And
Speaker 1: then he says, all right, well, what I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: is I'm gonna house this pair of tubes within a
Speaker 1: larger tube to protect them. So so I'm gonna need
Speaker 1: to dig pretty big tunnel. It's gonna be it's gonna
Speaker 1: be pretty big. So Beach also came up with a
Speaker 1: tunneling shield, and we talked about those in the Subway
Speaker 1: episode two. Tunneling. Tunneling shields are essentially a tunneling tool
Speaker 1: that holds up the integrity of the tunnel while you're digging,
Speaker 1: so that people behind you can shore that up with
Speaker 1: brick or whatever they're using to seal it off. So
Speaker 1: he goes and he starts digging this tunnel. Everyone thinks
Speaker 1: he's digging tunnels for humatic mail. Tubes. He's like, ha ha,
Speaker 1: I now have this wonderful device that I'm going to
Speaker 1: demonstrate to people, to show them how magical this is.
Speaker 1: You can ride in a carriage underground, thus avoiding all
Speaker 1: the dangerous traffic that's happening up on the surface level
Speaker 1: where you've got you know, horse drawn carriages going willy
Speaker 1: nilly all over the place and passing pedestrians everywhere. Exactly
Speaker 1: back to the cats and dogs. So he ended up
Speaker 1: buildings a a track that was only three feet long
Speaker 1: or about yeah, and the tunnel was eight feet in
Speaker 1: diameter or two point four meters, and about twenty people
Speaker 1: could ride on the carriage at a single time. And
Speaker 1: he himself funded the construction almost entirely out of his
Speaker 1: own pocket, So hundreds of thousands of dollars that Beach
Speaker 1: personally put forward to this because he really believed in it. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to take a ride on it once
Speaker 1: it opened, So he opens it and you actually had
Speaker 1: to go in through a department store. They had a
Speaker 1: an entrance to the station quote unquote station through their basement.
Speaker 1: The station itself was lit by gas lanterns, had a
Speaker 1: fountain with gold fish in it. And two statues of mercury, uh,
Speaker 1: flanking the tunnel. Yeah, very understated, was Mr Beach. And
Speaker 1: so if you wanted to ride, you needed two bits,
Speaker 1: so two bits in order for you to ride, and
Speaker 1: that would give you a trip to the end of
Speaker 1: the line and back again. And all ticket uh, all
Speaker 1: tickets that were bought, all that money was given to charity.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think it was given to charity for
Speaker 1: children whose parents were whose fathers were soldiers who had
Speaker 1: who had died, So it was it was all going
Speaker 1: to a charitable cause and it was yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be the birth of the subway
Speaker 1: system of New York, but it did not get much traction.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so uh boss the Boss Tweed corruption scandal
Speaker 1: happened and then Beach had to distance himself from Boss Tweed.
Speaker 1: Then uh he there was a stock market crash which
Speaker 1: ended up pulling a lot of funding away from any
Speaker 1: possibility of extending this outward. Also, there were people saying
Speaker 1: like could this actually be efficient? Um, we couldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: run multiple trains on a single track. It would all
Speaker 1: be one train per track because you couldn't you couldn't
Speaker 1: control their movement between stations otherwise, like how would you
Speaker 1: how would you get train a to you know, unless
Speaker 1: you have like a really complex system of blowers. Um.
Speaker 1: So they started saying, well, this doesn't look like it's
Speaker 1: going to be very efficient. There's not there's no money
Speaker 1: to support it. And so also the rise of electricity
Speaker 1: meant that ultimately it became moot. And again you and
Speaker 1: listened to how subways work to learn about the rest
Speaker 1: of that story. So, while it was never really taken
Speaker 1: seriously as a means of transportation for passengers, Beach's original
Speaker 1: proposal to build those pneumatic mail tubes, which he totally
Speaker 1: wasn't serious about, did actually catch on, not as he
Speaker 1: originally imagined them, which were these like ten ft diameter
Speaker 1: tubes above city streets designed for both people in mail,
Speaker 1: which he was calling the US pneumatic dispatch, right, so
Speaker 1: that never happened. As I'm sorry, clearly he was he
Speaker 1: was influenced at least in part by the London pneumatic dispatch,
Speaker 1: which was being successful as far as the mail goes,
Speaker 1: and um, so he would his his work would live
Speaker 1: on within that system, although I think he died before
Speaker 1: before it was actually built. Yeah, yeah, there's well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, progress is built upon a lot of hard
Speaker 1: work and sacrifice and not. In some cases it comes
Speaker 1: to us at the expense of ideas that seemed awesome,
Speaker 1: but ultimately we're untenable. However, something is you know, salvageable
Speaker 1: from the idea, and I think that's the case with Beach. Now,
Speaker 1: we just got through eighteen seventy. But we still have
Speaker 1: some more history to get through. Plus we have to
Speaker 1: talk about how pneumatic tubes are being used today, so
Speaker 1: we're going to save that for episode number two. But
Speaker 1: trust me, the rest of the story is just as
Speaker 1: interesting and in some cases just as crazy, So you'll
Speaker 1: need to tune in. Lauren, you'll be joining us for
Speaker 1: that one as well, right indeed, And where else can
Speaker 1: they see your work, Lauren? Well, these days I am
Speaker 1: working on other How Stuff Works shows such as brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, and what the Stuff? Yep, you can you
Speaker 1: can find all of those on how Stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can go to varrain Stuff show dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can go to f be You Thinking dot
Speaker 1: com or the YouTube's go to the YouTube. You can
Speaker 1: just google Lauren Vogue o Bomb if you can spell
Speaker 1: Lauren voge O bomb Um. I mean even if you can't,
Speaker 1: really you can. You can find me out of faith
Speaker 1: in you guys excellent. And of course if you want
Speaker 1: to drop align to me and have a suggestion for
Speaker 1: a future topic, whether it's you know what, an actual
Speaker 1: podcast topic, or someone I should have on as a
Speaker 1: guest host or someone I should have on as an interview,
Speaker 1: let me know. The email address is tech stuff at
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