tubes for children

Now I have a child there is a floor of the library where I am spending a lot more time - the children's section in the basement of our local public library. We mostly go there to borrow board books but I am interested in how a library in St Louis County is attracting children in other ways - through pneumatic tubes.

The Florissant Valley Library have recently renovated their children's section with a wall of pneumatic tubes, I guess to show how book slips or other objects travel. I can't tell from the photos whether children or adults can send things themselves through the tubes, it would be interesting to find out.

There are lots of photos of the renovation, under copyright, at the Library's Flickr page.

Image of Verne's cover from FC8 V5946 869ve, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

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.

meet me in the st louis postal system

There is another nice essay about pneumatic tubes online, this time about the St Louis postal system, which you can find at the RiverFront Times blog.

Those interested in technological assessment may be interested the quoted list of advantages and disadvantages of running the system:

Advantages: 
1. High rate of speed between stations for limited quantities of mail. 2. Freedom from surface congestion. 

Limitation and disadvantages: 
1. Only five pounds of mail could by carried in each container; and all classes of mail could not be carried. 2. The minimum time between dispatches is 15 seconds allowing only 20 pounds of letter mail each minute. Therefore, vehicle service would be required to carry mail during heavy volume times. 3. The inability to carry special delivery parcels due to the size of the carriers. 4. The relays at station are built in delays but they are unavoidable requiring all stations to be manned and open during operation. 5. The inability to dispatch between intermediate stations during continuous transmission between any two points.6. Inability to dispatch to railroad companies without additional handling. 7. Complaints resulting from careless locking and accidental opening of container in transit causing damaged mail. 8. Dampness and oil damage to mail. 9. Service interruptions block an entire line. 10. Congestion from heavy mail volumes. 11. Equipment takes up rented building space. 12. Excessive costs.

Image from Popular Mechanics, 10 Geeky Ways to Deliver Mail.

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.