hyper testing

Hyperloop Technologies will start testing it's transportation system "of the future" very soon, so WIRED reports. Still being compared to pneumatic tubes, the Hyperloop is gaining more and more press these days.

Forbes recently wrote about the patent implications of the technology. Apparently there have been already 30 inventions related to pneumatic mass transportation, the earliest dating to 1799.

Those interested in reading about the financial details and people managing this project, may want to read this other Forbes article, or for a fascinating review of the new book about the mastermind behind the invention, Elon Musk, see the London Review of Books.

Image of UCLA architecture students' imagined Hyperloopfrom DesignMilk used under a Creative Commons lisence.

Lapsed London history

I can highly recommend a new article on pneumatic tubes which has appeared recently on the slickly designed Lapsed Historian website. Written by a transportoholic and history lover known as Long Branch Mike, the article entitled Get Them on the Blower traces the history of postal pneumatic tubes in London. Rich in historical detail and imagery, the article is also filled with a physical sense of the materiality of the tubes in the 19th century, with stories of experiments in making them of leather, felt, vulcanised fibre, celluloid, alluminium, brass and finally plastic with felt or leather lining. There is a lot of new material for those already familiar with pneumatic tube systems and some novel links to other fascinating kinds of tubes such as speaking tubes (see below) and voice pipes.

Reader's interested in London's pneumatic tube transport systems may be interested in Ian Steadman's article in The New Statesman.

Speaking tubes image from Wikipedia. See also the following website for a comprehensive account of speaking tubes and voicepipes: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/voicepipe/voicepipe.htm