pneumatic tubes in literature: the beginnings of a list

After writing numerous posts now about appearances of pneumatic tube systems in fiction, I thought it would be worthwhile to start a list of these books. Most books I have come across rather randomly, so if you can think of any others to add to the list please add them in the comments!

Paul Auster: Invisible
Edward Bellamy (1888): Looking Backward
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
Shena Mackay: The Atmospheric Railway: New and Selected Stories
Ian McEwan: The Innocent
Anne Michaels: The Winter Vault
George Orwell: 1984
Marcel Proust: The Way by Swann
Neal Shusterman: The Downsiders
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five

the sieve and the sand

It's Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and Montag is in the vacuum-underground with the Bible in his hands. He is in "a loud car with blaring advertisements for Dentrifice, a train radio which vomits a ton-load of music made of tin, copper, silver, chromium, and brass" (p103). The people around him are pounded into submission; "there was no place to run". The "great air-train" that they travel in, falling down its shaft into the earth, resembles their fall into a bookless-hell, where all thoughts are governed by those in power. As Montag rushes "through the dead cellars of town, jolting him, he remembered the terrible logic of that sieve ... there were people in the suction train but he held the book in his hands and the silly thought came to him, if you read fast and read all, maybe some of the sand will stay in the sieve" (pp102 - 103). He does read and he remembers.

Later Montag catches the air-train again. An old man talks to him and talks to him "as the train was sucked from one end of the night city to the other on one long sickening gasp of motion" (p133). The pneumatic tube is a nauseating, suffocating place in Fahrenheit 451, where those who ride it are merely being taken for a ride, unquestioning cogs in the system.

Image from American Buddha.

another tour of the lost technology

For the second time, the public was granted an insider's peak into Stanford Hospital's pneumatic tube system recently, opened again for Atlas Obscura.

Retronaut Annetta Black reported on the tour of the system (and Gever Tulley kindly uploaded photos from the tour onto his Flikr site for sharing). Black describes Standford's tubes as quiet and efficient (although ear plugs needed!), and surprisingly common place. The report appears amongst a series of essays and photographs about pneumatic tubes on the beautifully designed Atlas Obscura website. Not surprising considering that the pneumatic tube system at the New York Public Library made it to the site's top ten most popular places for 2012, and as Black states: "for many retro-tech enthusiasts, pneumatic dispatch is the holy grail of awesome lost technologies".

Image from Gever Tulley's photostream.

listening in ...

A poster at the Post and Tele Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, by the pneumatic tube display ....

danish tubes in the postal museum

On a recent visit to Copenhagen, my husband and I visited the wonderful Post and Tele Museum where we not only learnt how to fold a letter and wax seal it but also found a working pneumatic tube display! Here are some photos:

 

Photos my own.

treasure in a tube

I have spent some time researching pneumatic tubes now, and they always seem to be found in American and European places. But a recent ABC podcast from Canberra, has revealed where these tubes are hidden in Australia too.  In the walls and ceilings of Old Parliament!

Michael Evans, the manager of visitor experience at the Museum of Australian Democracy in Old Parliament House, spoke to Louise Maher on the radio recently, to talk about this treasure in the museum.

He describes how there were several sets of tubes, one to the Postoffice and another 3km line to the government printers for sending out the Hansards.

For those curious to see the tubes at the museum, you can see them in the downstairs gallery, at the old post office and in the Attendant's Booth in the House of Representative's Chamber. Not all the tubes are there, but there are "some ends of it you can see" (see photo). Michael exclaims, that it is "really an untapped project to go and map what is there and what isn't there".

There is one section that still works but is not in action at the moment in order to preserve the technology - however Michael says that they want to get this working so that their visitors can see and hear the tubes (the thunk!).

Listen to the Treasure Trove podcast here.

And read the museum blogpost on Lamsons here.

science fictions

Rosalind Williams, author of the wonderful Notes on the Underground, is a keynote at a graduate conference at Rutgers University, Friday, March 1st 2013, titled "Science Fiction & Fictions of Science".

See the website for more information.

you can't fax a blood sample

Save space, save money, save time, and what's more, better patient care ... A new development at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre ticks off all of the reasons to install pneumatic tubes between their network of hospitals, and extend upon the existing lines. Pneumatic tubes are described this time, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, as an "age-old technology that has disappeared from much of the business world", but one needed in hospitals because "you can't fax a blood sample". These Swisslog tubes extend far - almost two city blocks. The journalist describes the 3D plans for the installation as like a page from a Dr. Seuss book, interviewing a number of developers, including representatives at Swisslog and Pevco about the tubes. One states "as hospitals expand, they're rarely one building anymore", the new hospital one that requires a centralised lab connected easily to the different buildings. Space is about patient care, and the more you can hide away the better - pneumatic tubes are perfect for this, their metal pipes invisible to most who visit a hospital. It is not so invisible to many hospital designers and engineers however, who are designing the tubes in more and more hospitals, nor to the many lab staff whose positions now become redundant as the tubes do their work.

Image: Pneumatic tubes in a parking garage from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

lost letter experiments

It seems that the lost letter has not lost its place in the world of research. Recently, anthropologists from UCL published an article in PlosOne where they used the lost letter technique to measure altruism. 300 hand addressed, stamped letters were dropped on London pavements, on rain-free days (hmm, not often then!). Their results showed that the wealthier the neighbourhood the more likely the letter would be returned. This is a finding which does of course have the potential to lead to negative stereotypes about kindness towards strangers, but can also be argued to point to some of the complex circumstances shaping everyday life in these neighbourhoods.

What does posting a lost letter show? The lost letter technique was first used in the 1960s by the social psychologist Stanley Milgram (of six-degrees-of-separation fame), as a perfect way to examine altruistic behaviour. His initial experiments involved leaving letters addressed to  favourable organisations and stigmatised organisations, finding that the former received more returned letters. The UCL experimenters were more controlled in the handwritten address, with the same gender neutral name on every letter, but it is interesting that the method itself is still used in research, despite the decline in posting letters.

Image from Diesel Punks.

the small world of pneumatics

As weird geographical chance would have it, I just happened to be two offices down from Christine, whose family owns a pneumatic tube system company in Germany.

The company is called HÖRTIG rohrpost, and is based in Bayreuth. They have been installing pneumatic tubes since the 1960s, into a variety of places such as hospitals, supermarkets, pharmacies and cinemas. Each system is tailor-made for its location, using innovative technologies. One of their latest developments is the CargoPlus model which has a diameter of 500mm and can take material up to 50kg. The company are also taking part in a project regarding the underground movement of cargo, while also expanding their horizons to China and other Asian countries.


The company showcases their work at various trade fairs, which Christine told me she remembered attending when she was younger, where they have elaborate displays, with tubing hanging from scaffolding. I hope to speak with other members of this family-run business in the future, find out more about how their systems are being tailored for hospitals and other buildings, in Europe and in Asia, and maybe even attend a trade fair to see this stall and learn more about this fascinating industry.

Images of a hospital system and tube with an X-Ray from the company website.