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.

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.

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

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.