straight to perfumery

I saw a trailer for the movie Brooklyn the other day and thought I glimpsed a gorgeous set of brass pneumatic tubes in the department store where the main character is working. I am off to the movies with friends on Wednesday to check! And let me know if you have seen any too. In the meantime, here are some tubes in the perfumery department of the old Myer in Melbourne to enjoy.

Image from WeekendNotes, as seen at Myer Mural Hall open day.

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!

pneumatic poetic

Nostalgic memories of pneumatic tubes in department stores in Edinburgh have inspired a recent poem by information designer and artist Steve Smart. Called 'The Divvy' the poem appears on his website 'Subjects, Objects, Verbs'. I highly recommend reading this wonderful poem for a sensorily rich evocation of the "secret innards of Co-Op central", also known as the "limbic original intranet of things".

the pneumatic underground

On the weekend, many buildings opened their doors in Melbourne as part of Melbourne Open House. It was wonderful being in the city on Sunday along with so many others on urban treasure hunts. After traipsing around rooftop gardens and coffee in Denmark House with friend Annie, I joined the queue to see the Russell Place substation. A tour promised to take all those patient enough to wait in line through a series of stairs to the main transformer transfer corridor, DC rooms, switch rooms and transformer compartments.

Photos from Russell Place Substation tour 2009, DSC_9694 and DSC_9660 originally uploaded by Boumba

Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, I did not have a chance to see the workings of Melbourne's electrical supply this year. However, the intense public interest in this site made me realise how fascinated people are by the 'inner workings' of our urban spaces. This led me to wonder about pneumatic tours in a city, in banks, supermarkets and of course hospitals. I know that during Atlas Obsura's Obsura Day, on March 20th this year, there was a tour of Stanford Hospital's pneumatic tube system by chief engineer Leander Robinson. What a great idea! It is a potentially fantastic way to bring together those interested in this topic together in person (who often chat online), as well as potentially drawing in a wider public to explore the magic of pneumatic tubes.

Post title from Banvard's Folly by Paul Collins.

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.