homely tubes

Pneumatic tube systems are used in hospitals, supermarkets, banks and pharmacies. But what about our own homes?

A UK-based project called Foodtubes, which promises to revolutionalise food transportation via pneumatic/vacuum technology, has recently led to all sorts of incredulous outcries and postulations by techie and environmental bloggers embracing and ridiculing the idea. Someone who has commented on the grist blog post about this issue argues that it is a waste to use Foodtube technology at the organisational level, but rather it should be taken into our own homes:

"I don't know about replacing deliveries to stores... trucks are awfully efficient for that! Make them electric, and they'd be hard to beat. On the other hand, pneumatic tubes could provide efficient delivery to individual homes, eliminating the need for people to go to the store. With modern barcode or RFID systems, the packages could be routed to the correct house easily enough. Some things might not do too well - I wouldn't want to cram a 20-pound watermelon into a 6-inch tube - but for most staples it would work quite well"

It isn't the first time that pneumatic tube technology has been considered for home usage. Remember that great Heineken ad from a few months ago? There is also the home elevator, as well as centralised home vacuum cleaning units. My dad remembers one of these units being installed in his parents' new home in the 1980s. It seems that home-based pneumatic tube technology is either something from the past, or the projected Jetsonian future, but is it for us right now?

Image courtesy of fabulousfairy.

pneumatic transportation: the stuff of dreams

For centuries, the concept of human transportation via pneumatic tube has captured the imagination of entrepreneurs, novelists, tinkerers and inventors.  I have already posted about the grandest dreamer of them all, Alfred Beach, whose pneumatic subway system was thwarted by politics and personal vendettas. 

Speeding into the future, the world of Futurama is connected via a vast pneumatic tube network.  Whilst Beach’s subway was never realised in its original form, and Futurama’s system is the stuff of science fiction, there are nonetheless a number of ways in which humans can be catapulted through the atmosphere via pneumatics.  There are the nifty elevators for one, and now something which has recently captured my attention, the shweeb.  OK, so the shweeb doesn’t really count as pneumatic transport (and is much more about pedal power), but it certainly resembles a pneumatic capsule.  Google has recently backed the invention, with many asking: why?  Should such inventions remain the stuff of dreams and TV shows?

Beach pneumatic plan from Wikimedia Commons.