cash slips and mugs of tea

Wonderful video below by Mike Taylor of the Lamson Pneumatic Tube System at Jacksons of Reading, documenting the cash exchange system of the department store which amazingly operated until 2013 when the store closed. Great sounds, scenes of cash being exchanged amongst mugs of tea and stacks of paper. At the end of the film you learn about Robin Adcroft and Thomas Macey's plans to re-enact this system which they had worked with for years at the store and later bought at auction.



Thanks very much to Mike Olivier for sending me this video!

zondag post

Zondag, some years ago ...

Thank you Annelies, for the clipping!

"Een bijzonder toestel.". "Algemeen Handelsblad". Amsterdam, 14-03-1886. Geraadpleegd op Delpher op 25-11-2015, http://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=ddd:010146876:mpeg21:a0070

birthday post

It's my birthday coming up soon and I've received an early present from a very thoughtful gift-giver:

Yes, I now have my own capsule! It sits on my desk at the moment. I can feel its worn-away felt ends, cold metal body, thready canvas details. I can look inside at its rusty insides. The little door squeaks as it moves, a satisfying suck of air and click as it closes completely. These are the sensory and material details of pneumatic tubes which I love.

If I look closely, engraved on the capsule are the words "The Grover Co. Detroit". My gift giver helps me to research the capsule's provenance. We find that the Grover Company was selling pneumatic tubes at the same time as Lamson, in the early 20th century, servicing department stores whose needs had extended beyond their cash railway systems. William and Clarence Grover founded the company in Woodburn, Michigan, but had branches in Detroit too. In the 1950s the Grover Company filed patents for pneumatic tube terminals. According to the Cash Railway site, Swisslog is the company's descendant. 

I am sure there is much more to discover of the history of my tube.

Image my own.

caught in the tube but no 'arm done

I noticed the other day, for the first time (although I am sure that someone has told me before), that my local supermarket has Lamson pneumatic tube systems at the cash registers. It may just be the extreme weariness that overcomes me at the Albert Heijn but it shows you have to keep your eyes out for this technology!

Eyes out, but arms in! A poor Tesco's duty manager made news in Manchester recently because of an unfortunate incident at his pneumatic cash system. The young man's arm got caught in the tube system, suspended vertically for 30 minutes. The reasons the limb found it into the vacuum are unclear - perhaps doing some "maintenance work" on the tube? Fire crews came to the rescue and dismantled the tube, using a (pneumatic) saw to release the man from the contraption. Unfortunately for the red-faced duty manager, as it was a 24 hour supermarket the store didn't close during the fireman's efforts so there were plenty of spectators to enjoy the event.

pneumatic tubes in blogosphere

Pneumatic tubes have been the subject of one or two chat forums, and some fantastic blog posts. On the 'In the Public Domain' chat forum, there is a conversation about Stanford Hospital's network, tubes at Denver International airport and some links to YouTube videos. Conversation drifts into science fiction fantasy and high-tech imaginings.

The wonderful Web Urbanist provides extensive coverage on the tubes. The Web Urbanist post has details of Alfred Beach's 19th century pneumatic subway, cash railways, postal systems, steampunk aesthetics and novel uses of the technology in watch stores and coffee houses. The post mentions hospitals too:

When moving small packages quickly from one place to another within a self-contained area, pneumatic tube systems can’t be beat. Indeed, modern tube networks are installed in new hospitals, older systems are added to and original systems just keep on ticking along, as they have very few moving parts to wear out. Hospitals are ideal locations for tube systems; they move medical samples from one area to another quickly – and in hospitals, speed can save lives.

And finally, for today's post, there is Curious Expedition's Pneu York, Pneu York, which has snippets about a cat flying through the New York postal network and stories of how employees of the Waldorf-Astoria used their system for gossip. The post describes how many of New York's pneumatic tube systems were dismantled in the 20th century, except for the NY Humanities and Social Sciences library, where book requests are sent down to the stacks, seven floors below the ground, via pneumatics, with the books then appearing on an oval ferris wheel. Finally, there is the tale of pneumatic tube system vs bicycle in Prague:

“We had a race once between us, a bicycle courier, and a dispatch van to see who could get an identical parcel to [Czech President Vaclav] Havel up at the castle,” recalls Jiri Lilling, one of nine engineers who maintain the pneumatic network. “It was rush hour, so the van took an hour. The bicycle took 25 minutes. But our parcel was there in 4 minutes.”

Image via Curious Expeditions.

pneumatic wanderings

Last week I was in Tasmania, and spent some time searching the Internet with my mum for pneumatic tube discoveries. She remembered a department store in Montreal called Holt Renfrew that had a wonderful pneumatic tube system, visibly crisscrossing the walls and ceiling of the store. We found out that these systems are also called cash railways or cash carriers. I've noticed a cash carrier in my local Coles supermarket, still used to transport wads of banknotes. I wonder where else these cash carrying networks lie in Melbourne? How do they relate to the systems used in hospitals?

Image via the Ephemera Society.