reporting the pneus

Recently I stayed in a hotel in Amsterdam that was housed in the old headquarters of the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant. It was wonderful fun with lots of quirky features as befits the latest hipster hotels these days, from communal workspaces in the lobby to yoga lessons and rooftop DJs. I loved the "Do not disturb, I am writing my first novel" sign for the door which seemed particularly apt as I was working on the my first book project with my colleagues Sally and Susan while there.

Staying in the hotel reminded me of how much times have changed in the life of newspapers, as they not only move to cheaper realestate but their form has changed considerably in just the last decade. Newspaper technologies have continually changed with the times, and it will come of no surprise to regular readers of this blog, that newspaper offices were once home to networks of pneumatic tubes.

Former employes of the Niagara Falls Review recently reminisced about the tubes in their offices in the 1950s. "I also remember the pneumatic tube system" an employee who worked in the office in the late 1960s and early 1970s recalls. "It was how you got copy to the composing room ... You took the copy, put it in a tube, stamped it and up it went".

Photo of the Volkshotel roof from JLG realestate. Stills from Deadline USA and His Girl Friday, from an article by Eric Mink on TV worth watching and Jim Emerson on his website Scanners.

winding dizzying putkiposti

I have just finished yet another great Norwegian novel, and one more awaits, freshly picked up from the library. At night I am watching The Bridge, halfway between Sweden and Denmark. Soon I will be in Copenhagen. What can I find out about Scandinavian pneumatic tubes in the meantime?

While pneumatic tube systems do not seem to be as resplendent in Scandinavian cities as they are in other European places, there are still a number of companies situated in this part of the world, such as the Finnish PutkiPosti company Teho Tecknikka, and others in Sweden. At the Kommunikationens Hus, the Post and Tele Museum in Denmark, they had a popular exhibition on pneumatic tubes, where they described them as something between a vacuum cleaner and a postbox. The exhibition summary says that there were no extensive pneumatic networks in Copenhagen, although some buildings did have their own systems, such as Riget Hospital and the Odense University Hospital. Whether these still exist I am not sure. Finally, there is a lovely poetic post (so I gather from Google Translate) by Johanna Eriksson on the Swedish blog [squinch][researching] about pneumatics: "Criss Cross and Around ... A single long water slide ...Where? Already gone. There it was again!".

Image from Teho Tecknikka.
Thanks to BuisPost.eu for the pneumatic post translations.

tube post

A marvellous postcard from Amsterdam arrived in the letterbox the other day - Thanks Andy!