sensory map of an imaginary pneumatic tube system

I have been wondering what a map of an imaginary pneumatic tube system, for a fantastical city of the past, present or future might look like ... or smell like ... or taste like ... or sound like ... For why should maps be restricted to beautiful lines and pictures?

I am inspired by the taste map of the London underground, created by James Wannerton of Blackpool in the UK. Wannerton has synaesthesia, a condition which means that the senses become intermingled in interesting and sometimes disturbing ways. For Wannerton, it means that he can taste words. His map is filled with tube stops that he has tasted, from cold Horlicks and crisp sandwiches to coal dust and burned rubber. What would pneumatic tube stops taste like? In Christchurch, where pneumatic tubes transport burgers and fries from the kitchen to hungry diners, they might be rather tasty. In the hospital it might be a bit different! Imagine a network that transported all different kinds of materials at the same time: burgers through one line, letters through another.

I am inspired too by Kate McLean's smell maps. In Paris, letters sent by pneumatic tube could be scented by perfume, the scent lingering in the little capsules. On Roosevelt Island however, it is garbage which moves through the tubes, leaving a lot less pleasant smell. Further inspiration can be found in the many sound maps online. Sounds could be recorded of landing and take-off, or rumbling journeys and expressions of delight or dismay at the contents of capsules, such as those that I have uploaded onto SoundCloud.

I am having lots of fun imagining all the sensory stops on my fantastical map. What would your imaginary pneumatic map sound, smell, feel, taste and look like?

For more about pneumatic tube maps, see my series of blogposts in 2010 and 2011.

post-postal conference

I have been to interesting conference destinations before, but I think that the Post and Tele Museum in Copenhagen takes the cake. How often do you get to go down slides with your fellow delegates, in a room filled with giant postage stamps? Or see a pneumatic tube system in action!? (thanks Andreas)

I am speaking about the New Directions in the History of Infrastructure conference, that took place in the postal museum last month, hosted by Andreas Marklund and Mogens Rudiger. It was the kind of conference where your museum tour guide asks "who here collects stamps?" and a good proportion of the attendees raise their hands.

Over two and a half days, about 20 or so scholars interested in histories of infrastructure met to discuss their latest research. We heard about people smuggling, eavesdropping, sabotage, tinkering and past futures, in amongst talks on railways, the telegraph, metro systems, logistics, bicycle infrastructure and other large scale infrastructure projects. You can read the conference abstract here and see the program here.

It was one of those incredibly inspiring meetings where everyone was open to exchanging ideas during talks, lunches, dinners and coffees. I received good feedback from my talk and found out about even more wonderful uses of pneumatic tubes. As one of the only non-historians in the audience, I was warmly welcomed and loved learning more about the historical approach. I hope to keep in touch with many of the fascinating researchers I met during this workshop.

Images my own, from inside and on top of the Post and Tele Museum, Copenhagen.

officially secured

Several years ago I posted about a postmasters' apology, documented in a ready-made sticker designed for when any errors in pneumatic tube transport occured. Such stickers are still in circulation for when mail is damaged, as evidence from the this delightful piece of mail which arrived for me from Exeter the other day ...

Image my own.

opening the tubes up to tourists

Pneumatic tube aficionados visiting Prague in the near future should be interested to know that the pneumatic post system there has recently been purchased by Zdenek Drazil from Windcom, who plans, according to the Prague Daily Monitor, to "revitalise it and use it in education as well as a tourist attraction at Prague Castle".

And it seems that those longing to send their mail by pneumatic post may have a chance to relive this experience if the venture goes ahead. Drazil says, "I would like the principles (of the pneumatic post) to be used in teaching the physical principles to students. I am also sure that the terminal at Prague Castle in the spaces of Ceska posta could be successful. Tourists could inspect it and send a postcard or a letter through it". Reason enough indeed for a visit!

Image of Prague tube station from m4r00n3d's photostream

pneumatic tubes in literature 4

Two fantastic paragraphs from Slaughterhouse Five (p7) about the connections made between institutions, by the brass and velvet pneumatic tubes, sent to me by my brother-in-law Andy:

While I was studying to be an anthropologist, I was also working as a police reporter for the famous Chicago City News Bureau for twenty-eight dollars a well. One time they switched me from the night shift to the day shift, so I worked sixteen hours straight. We were supported by all the newspapers in town, and the AP and the UP and all that. And we would cover the courts and the police stations and the Fire Department and the Coast Guard out on Lake Michigan and all that. We were connected to the institutions that supported us by means of pneumatic tubes which ran under the streets of Chicago. 

Reporters would telephone in stories to writers wearing headphones, and the writers would stencil the stories on mimeograph sheets. The stories were mimeographed and stuffed into the brass and velvet cartridges which the pneumatic tubes ate. The very toughest reporters and writers were women who had taken over the jobs of men who had gone to war. 

For those interested in learning more about the Chicago Postal Pneumatic Tube Company, you may enjoy this thread on the Forgotten Chicago Forum, about the mysterious manhole covers in the city. 

Image of the Chicago Postal Pneumatic Tube Company from the University of Illinois Library.

an extinct tube station called post office

For some years now, every time I have asked for stamps for my post, I have been given a print-out label. I know this is easy and efficient and that the postmistresses and masters have long lunchtime queues and other important requests like phone bill payments to deal with, but really, has the perforated, lick-able and often (although less and less these days) beautiful stamp really disappeared so much from our consciousness that even those who work in postoffices can't recognise what it is?

In my local 'postoffice' in Exeter - a completely unromantic place in a characterless mall, akin to the shopping complex-style cinemas we are now forced to put up with - there is one window where you can buy 'interesting stamps';that is stamps which are not just multicoloured variations of Elizabeth's profile (as iconic as that is!). This is of course one step up from the Netherlands, where the only option is standard issue local and international stamps sold in newsagents, but still, the stamp buying experience is somewhat diminished when you have to wait for the right window to call your number. I know that there are other stamp lovers in Exeter though, as the post office's fantastically foxy Roald Dahl stamp stash is now depleted, with only the dreary prospect of Olympic stamps ahead.

The relegation of interesting stamps to the corners of postoffices and their disappearance from our mail is part and parcel of a larger decline in postal practices. The Guardian ran a story last week farewelling the great age of the post office, a great age that had already started to disappear early last century when post offices were demolished in London and tube station names changed from Post Office to St Paul's. More recently postal services the world over are losing money, lots of money. "Weightless electronic words" (Meek 2011) have proved too powerful a competitor to the written word. In 2005 the letter market went into absolute decline, falling ever since and by 2015 it is predicted that letter volumes will decline by another 25 - 40 percent.

A rather grim picture of Dutch and English postal networks is painted in an excellent essay by James Meek in the London Review of Books last year. Meek follows letters ethnographically, meeting the Dutch postal workers who sort out crates of mail (catalogues and magazines) in their flats and the bureaucrats reorganising Royal Mail services. Before Meek started the essay he had planned to set up the interviews by post, but he didn't think about it very long. Instead he phoned, emailed, texted, skyped, chattered and googled.

So here is yet another rant to add to the many moans about the loss of postal magic from our lives. This is more than nostalgia for the past, but rather sadness that slow, time-consuming, thoughtful practices such as correspondence by post are disappearing in contemporary society, as are the infrastructures which support them. So I am going to sign off now, go and make myself a cup of tea, and write a letter.

For other blogs celebrating post see for example: letters of note (thanks Joeri) letterheady and everyday should be a red letter day.

Photo my own, taken during conference trip in Oxford, 2011.

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.

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.

at the touch of a pneumatic button

Past futurists have often imagined pneumatic tubes as features of their technological horizon. The Smithsonian Magazine recently published a Boston Globe article, written by Thomas Anderson on December 24, 1900 that imagined what Boston would look like in the year 2000.

Of course there were pneumatic tubes, but these would be no simple letter carrying networks. Pneumatics would have the multi-functionality needed to ease many tasks of daily living:

"The pneumatic tube service, by the way, will have reached its perfection long before the first half of the new century has flown. It will have become a most important factor in the domestic life of the people which also will have undergone great changes. Through such tubes a householder will undoubtedly receive his letters, his readymade lunches, his laundry, his morning and evening paper, and even the things he may require from the department store, which will furnish at the touch of a button any essential solid or liquid that can be named. By means of his electro-pneumatic switchboard, with which all well regulated houses will be equipped, he may sit in his comfortable arm chair and
enjoy either the minister’s sermon or the latest opera in the new Symphony hall
of the vintage of 1960".

The postal system itself, was to be rather more complex than the turn of the century systems transporting letters between postboxes and postoffices:

"The system of pneumatic transmission of mail already introduced is undoubtedly
to have an extensive development, and I have little doubt that the time will
come when mail will be sent from the central or branch post office through such
tubes directly to the house or office of the citizen who cares to pay for the
cost of such service... I do not anticipate that the cheapening and extension of
the telegraph or telephone service is going to adversely affect the number of
letters written and mailed in the future. On the contrary, the cheapening and
improvement of the postal service may operate as a factor against the growth of
the other service"

Sadly it seems that the telephone service did much to "adversely affect" letter writing, at least in its material form. The internet affects not only how we communicate with each other, but also the way we read newspapers, do our shopping and all manner of other tasks, that in Thomas Anderson's eyes would, in our retro future, be easily undertaken at the touch of a pneumatic tube button.
Image from the Smithsonian Magazine.

sorted then sent, sent then sorted

Images from the Library of Congress' Flikr photostream.

pneumatic tube correspondence of the week 6

Oslo to Hamburg, including via Rohrpost

Image from Wikipedia.

a postmaster's apology

Recently I sent a letter to a friend in Amsterdam, only for her to receive it with mysteriously charred edges. A previous letter had arrived with some of its contents missing. There is definitely something odd going on with this line of postal communication!

It seems almost impossible sometimes to work out where postal damage has occured, with so many stages of the journey from when a letter dives into the postbox to when it slides through a mailbox slot.

In the days of pneumatic tube mail transportation, mishaps also occured, and love letters would go missing, postcards sent to the wrong address and blockages and leakages cause postal disorder. Traces of these accidents are evident in some pieces of mail, including this postcard:

However, hopefully the recipient was consoled by this wonderful, polite apology from a Boston postmaster:

Postcards from stampboards

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.

italian notes on the pneumatics

Post from Italy ...

Images from a wonderful webpage entitled "alcune note sulla 'posta pneumatica'" (which I only wish that I could understand without the the morphing mediation of google translate), and a recent holiday in Sicily...

de la Poste

A must-see on a recent trip to Paris was the Musée de la Poste. Having been enticed by my brother-in-law-to-be's photos and having just missing out on seeing pneumatics at the Palais de Tokyo, I was waiting in anticipation for some time for this visit!

After having our tickets stamped at an vintage post office booth we wandered through the many levels of the intriguing museum. We threaded our way through postal technological history, and then saw what I had been waiting for - the tubes pneumatique:

Little scraps of leather and glass and metal from the system in a cabinet. While it was difficult to get a sense of the vast underground labyrinth from the display (although a map did help), the objects gave the network a materiality, imbued with a sense of the many connections made by pneumatic post.

pneumatic tube correspondence of the week 4

via Berlin Rohrpost

Image from wikipedia.

pneumatic tube correspondence of the week 3

From the Metropolitan Postcard Club of New York City.

pneumatic tube correspondence of the week 2

via München Rohrpost ...

Image from Wikipedia.

pneumatic tube correspondence of the week 1

via Hamburg Rohrpost ...

Image from Wikipedia.