sent via atomic fairies and unicorns

Plenty of pneumatic tubes have been captured on Kodak film, although unlike today's camera, the smartphone, it would have been difficult to make the kind of videos I reported on last week with a film camera.

It turns out that Kodak was using pneumatic tubes themselves, but for a very strange purpose - to transport nuclear tests as late as 2006. They had their very own nuclear reactor which was housed in a "closely guarded, two-foot-think concrete walled underground bunker in the company's headquarters" in Rochester New York, according to this Gizmodo report. Reminiscent of the fantastical contemporary art installation in Paris recently, it was "fed tests" by pneumatic tube system, with no employees ever making contact with the reactor. In a sarcastic wink to the fact that humans are always mixed up with technologies, Gizmodo report that apparently the system must have been operated by "atomic fairies and unicorns".

Thanks again to Long Branch Mike for sharing with me another fascinating piece of pneumatic tube pneus.

Flickr image by Asja Boros used under the Creative Commons lisence.

part victorian, part jetsons

"The dream of the pneumatic tube will never die" ....

And so begins a carefully and beautifully collaged video of pneumatic tubes by Vox - watch til the end to see what they did with the goldfish!

above above ground

Plans are afoot for even more pneumatic tubes in New York City, already home to the Roosevelt Island tubes and the Hudson Yards developments, as well as many others in the world of fiction and cinema. This time it is the High Line which might be tubed for waste disposal, quoted in The Atlantic's CityLab as perfect for such infrastructure considering that "the tube could be strung along the bottom of the viaduct, avoiding any need to tunnel through streets".

Image of the High Line used under Creative Commons lisence from David Berkowitz's Flikr page.

a building corresponds

According to the anthropologist Tim Ingold, to correspond is to be human (from Allegra TV, Tim Ingold on the Correspondence of Lives):

"Human lives are carried on alongside the lives of beings of manifold other kinds: we respond to them as they respond to us. Lives, in short, are bound in correspondence, and this is what makes them social"

I can't help but have these words in mind when I read this article about the inter-office correspondence of post through pneumatic tubes, our lives intertwined with the network of tubes:

INTER-OFFICE correspondence is shunted about from one. floor to another with lightning-like rapidity, thanks to the pneumatic-tube system of transferring messages, recently installed in the new skyscraper of a New York insurance company. The various tubes shown in the photo below lead to different offices in the building. If a message from the fifth floor must go to an office on the twelfth, it is shot to the dispatching room shown in the picture, where attendants insert it in the proper tube and it is pneumatically delivered to its destination.

My thanks again to Patryk for pointing me in the direction of this article and the world of the Modern Mechanix, from where this image comes!

sounding infrastructure

Pneumatic tubes have often been a source of inspiration for artists, such as Serge Spitzer, Niklas Roy, Yvonne Lee Schultz and Vittore Baroni. The other day I came across another pneumatic art installation: Playing the Building by David Byrne.

In this stunning looking sound installation, a retrofitted organ becomes connected to a building's infrastructure, playing it like an enormous instrument. Through pneumatic tubes and wires and cables, the organ is attached to metal beams and pillars and heating pipes, causing them to vibrate and resonate in order to produce sound. 

The installation was first exhibited in Stockholm in 2005, then later in New York City (2008), London (2009) and Minneapolis (2012).

Images from Flikr, used under the Creative Commons lisence, from Quinn Heraty, Russ Garrett, JellyBeanz, and Chris Guy.

Washington Post

Choosing which museums to visit in Washington D.C. is a monumental task, but I had no hesitation about heading straight to the Smithsonian Postal Museum during my time off, on a recent work visit to the capital city. Certainly one of the museum jewels of the city, the museum is housed in the majestic old City Post Office building and hosts never-ending postal amusements to be entertained by, from collecting stamps to writing postcards.

After making my way past the gilt postal desks in the entrance way and then security, I walked underneath the sparkling ceiling of stamps straight into the little Pneumatic Tube Service exhibit. You can find a picture on the right, a little dark unfortunately because of the low lighting. The capsule exhibited is one of the highlights of the collection (follow the links to find some great video footage).  There is a little text on the systems built and used in Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Boston and St Louis, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

While this part of the permanent collection is small, I did find some other pneumatic traces elsewhere, such as a telegramme, and a plethora of links online (start with the special section on Pneumatic Tube Mail).

I loved this postal museum, where you can make your own stamp collection from donated stamps and cancel postcards in different historical periods. There is a movie which shows how post moves through the U.S. postal system, which reveals some of the wonders of how letters arrive at their destinations - I experienced the same kind of fascination watching this film as I did as a child watching how crayons were made on Sesame Street. And at the end of the visit you can send your favourite postcards with carefully chosen stamps at the museums' own postoffice. Researchers who want to know more can arrange to visit the museum library on specific days of the month or by appointment - next time!

Image my own.

winding sentences, text and tubes

Of a time when sentences where long, space mattered in newspapers, and pneumatic tubes ran under the city streets ...

From The New York Times, September 30, 1892.

pencils and post

In her essay, My Life in Pencils, Mary Norris describes her now obsolete job at The New Yorker, called collating, where she had to copy legibly all changes on a piece of writing (from editor, author, fact checker and proof reader) onto a clean proof page, which was then put into a cannister and sent, via pneumatic tube, to a higher floor where the changes were transmitted, by fax, to a printer in Chicago.

This leads her to ponder the pencil. It is a lovely little essay, in which the writer describes moving from a soft No. 1 pencil to a harder No. 2 pencil as feeling like she had a hangover. A party she attends is hosted by a sixth-generation pencil-maker, dressed "in shades of pencil lead". Not only does this piece refer to yet another use of the wonderful pneumatic tube, but it also lovingly celebrates another technology which is largely taken for granted.

tubistes, steamfitters and rocketeers

There have been many different names given to those who work on, or with, pneumatic tube systems: engineers, tubistes, diagnostic scheduling technicians, steamfitters, operations coordinators, postmasters, sorters, petit facteur télégraphistes and who could forget the cambrioleurs aspirateur, or vacuum burglers!

But now I have a favourite: the rocketeers.

Thanks to the Big Apple blog for highlighting the use of the term rocketeer to refer to postal works in the New York City postal pneumatic tube system. Does anyone know the names of any other occupations associated with these tubes?

Image from Between the Seats blog.

Pneu Pneumatics in Pneu York City?

Could there be a new pneumatic system being considered in New York City? The blog City Atlas reported recently on a presentation by those involved in a New York state-funded research project looking at extending pneumatic tube trash systems elsewhere in Manhattan.

Something for pneumatic tube lovers to keep an eye on.

Image from GSAPP.

monitoring and maintaining the tubes

While pneumatic tubes are celebrated for their efficient transportation of solid objects, sometimes the system blocks, clogs, and stops. In hospitals this can require urgent repair. The Otago Times reported on one incident of emergency surgery that was needed on a pneumatic system in Dunedin, where the piping was cut in several places to retrieve samples that had become blocked.

At the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, a pneumatic tube work committee meets biweekly to review problems and concerns. Their troubleshooting guide is laminated and blu-tacked near each sending/receiving station.

Pneumatic tube company Pevco have recently released an automated mobile email alert system for hospital engineers, while their Houston branch offers three day training for hospital engineers including hands-on maintenance scenarios.

Pneumatic tube engineers need to be creative. In her Cabinet article, Molly Wright Steenson writes how in Paris, in the times of the Poste Pneumatique, a tubiste would relieve blockages in the system by reversing air pressure and drawing the carrier back to the station. When this didn't work, the tubiste would try another tactic - fire a pistol into the tube which created a sound wave that allowed calculation of the location of the blocked item. Surgery of this system required sloshing through Paris' sewers to the area of blockage.

For those interested in clogging tubes and engineering creativity more generally, you will want to see Gregory Whitmore's wonderful video about blockages and all other kinds of monitoring, maintenance and mayhem associated with pneumatic tube systems on Roosevelt Island, New York. The video was made as part of the Fast Trash exhibition in New York in 2010 (read the pneumatic post about the exhibition here and for more about maintenance here). Here is a sneak peak:

Nature Abhors a Vacuum :: EXCERPT - "JAMS." from gregory whitmore on Vimeo.

All images in this post are stills from this video. See here for the longer version.

inspiring postal and museum spaces

Occasionally you come across some inspiring spaces, glimpsed via the internet, that you just have to share. Jennie Hinchcliff's studio and the Morbid Anatomy Library are two of these. Jennie's studio celebrates all that is wonderful about sending post, whereas the anatomy library is a beautifully collated collection of medical and scientific objects.

The postal art studio

For those unfamiliar with Jennie Hinchcliff''s blog, Every Day Should be a Red Letter Day, this is a fantastic site to stir your creative postal energy. After reading a few posts you will be itching to switch off the laptop and pick up a pen, a nice sheet of paper, your favourite stamp and write to a friend. Recently Jennie posted photos of her studio in construction, providing a glimpse into her own postal world:

The library of curious medical objects

The Morbid Anatomy blog provides a neverending source of inspiration through posts about taxidermy, anatomical art, surgical history and hundreds of other topics in the mysterious realm of medicine and science. A visit to this website, in particularly the comprehensive list of medical museums, is always a must before I travel. The Morbid Anatomy Library is a recent extension of the blog. Housed in Brooklyn, New York and open only by appointment (email morbidanatomy[at] gmail.com to arrange), this is an inspiring research space for the curious:

Photos from Everyday Should be a Red Letter Day and Morbid Anatomy used with kind permission of Jennie Hinchcliff and Joanna Ebenstein.

pneumatic post art of the week 3

Test Site by Carsten Höller
(Unilever Series,Tate Modern, London, 2006)

Experience by Carsten Höller
(New Museum, New York, 2011)

Follow hyperlinks for more information about this pneumatic-looking slide at the Tate and New Museum.

Images from Charles Hayne and Scalino's Flikr pages

chutes, stacks and tubes

Moving from the Netherlands to Australia to England during the last few months has not only meant that I haven't been blogging, but also that I haven't been able to maintain a nice library of books to curl up and read over winter. Luckily there are always libraries!

I am a big fan of public libraries in all shapes and forms, including the solemn and silent, the noisy little locals and the slickly designed big nationals. Libraries have all sorts of fun technologies to move books, request slips and other papers around like chutes, conveyer belts and yes, of course, pneumatic tubes.

The New York Humanities and Social Sciences library, and now the New York Science, Industry and Business library have pneumatic systems which allow request slips to be sent deep into the stacks, the books returned on a ferris wheel. In the Law Library in the Library of Congress, there are pneumatic tubes running from the closed stacks to the reading room. Sadly however, some libraries have recently lost their pneumatic systems in the midst of rennovations, such as the St Louis Central Library.

There are so many reasons to love libraries, the amuseument park of chutes, stacks and tubes only adding to the pleasure and importance of these public institutions.

Image of pneumatic tubes still in use at St Louis Public Library, from VanishingSTL's Flikr photostream.

sorted then sent, sent then sorted

Images from the Library of Congress' Flikr photostream.

love underground

Jennifer Ouellette has just added a new book to my reading list in her blogpost on pneumatic tubes for Scientific American. It's called The Downsiders by Neal Shusterman. Who can resist a tale of underground romance?

pneumatic post correspondence of the week 5

How to save steps with Lamson Pneumatic Tubes

Postcard from The Paper Collector.

travelling post

A British travel company recently found that only 15% of travellers who completed their survey, sent postcards when on holidays. Eight years ago The Telegraph reported the death of the postcard when only 30% of surveyed travellers said that they didn't send postcards anymore! So for the pleasure of those who, when in faraway lands, love finding the perfect postcard, crafting a message, queuing with locals in postoffices, pouring over stamp possibilities and hunting down postboxes, here are some pneumatic-post-themed postcards, from times when travellers were never too far from their fountain pen:

Images from Postoffice Postcards, Metropolitan Postcard Club of New York City and Active Social Plastic.

coffee and chocolate

Coffee and chocolate go so well together that I thought this fantastic pneumatic tube system rigged up at The Roasting Plant in New York City would be the perfect image for Easter.

According to a New York Magazine article on the store, the tubes, where "beans dance overheard" are meant to "minimize the time and distance between roasting, grinding, brewing, and drinking". When it comes to coffee, time certainly matters! This is the kind of technology which I can see would also find a perfect place in my old hometown Melbourne, where everything to do wtih coffee is now well and truly science.

Happy Easter!

Pneumatic tubes bring just roasted coffee beans into their respective tubes., originally uploaded by Curious Expeditions. See here for more pictures of The Roasting Plant: http://www.roastingplant.com/tour/

tubes for drella

This week I went to see a great dance performance by Scapino Ballet called Songs for Drella, which was a tribute to Andy Warhol. The reason I mention this is because of the presumedly little known fact that Warhol was a fan of pneumatic tube systems.

A lover of "good plain American" food, who believed that "progress is very important and exciting in everything except food", Andy Warhol once helped design a restaurant which served homely comfort food (i.e. re-heated frozen dinners). Called the "Andy-Mat", the restaurant (which never eventuated), was going to include a system where customers' orders would be sent to the kitchen via pneumatic tube.

This seems a rather progressive way of ordering un-progressive food! The un-realised system sounds like a precursor to the digital hand-held ordering machines now used regularly by waitresses.

Photo and quotes from "Restaurant-ing through history" blog of Warhol and his partners, [standing L to R] architect Araldo Cossutta, developer Geoffrey Leeds, and financier C. Cheever Hardwick III.