part victorian, part jetsons

"The dream of the pneumatic tube will never die" ....

And so begins a carefully and beautifully collaged video of pneumatic tubes by Vox - watch til the end to see what they did with the goldfish!

tubes are 10 years old

This year marks the 10th year anniversary of YouTube. What would we do without the wonders of this broadcasting service these days? How else would we learn to cast on, pull teeth, fold t-shirts, test genetics or build our own pneumatic tube systems? The Guardian reports on other ways in which our lives have changed since we started putting ourselves on the tube ...

tube cam

While it has been a few months since I have blogged about pneumatics, they certainly haven't strayed too far from my thoughts - how could they! I've enjoyed novels and short stories about them, heard about fantastic pneumatic art projects, spent a day in a pneumatic tube factory and kept up-to-date with all of the latest hospital installations. Which means many interesting pneumatic posts to come, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, a video to share, posted by Exploratorium, called Science in the City: Pneumatic Tubes. It is a little documentary about the famous Stanford Hospital system which has inspired many creative adventures by pneumatic tube lovers. This one is special for its camera footage, dubbed by a commenter as "tube cam". The visuals and sounds are wonderful in this footage, which feels like a mix between a waterslide ride and an endoscopic exploration.

Still video image of inside a hospital pneumatic tube from YouTube, Science in the City: Pneumatic Tubes.

DIY pneumatic tube system

Last year I reported on some evidence of vacuumpunk, as video bloggers document their DIY pneumatic tube systems. Looks like its a movement!



This and other videos can be found here, on the Hallo Spencer Fanblog.

monitoring and maintaining the tubes

While pneumatic tubes are celebrated for their efficient transportation of solid objects, sometimes the system blocks, clogs, and stops. In hospitals this can require urgent repair. The Otago Times reported on one incident of emergency surgery that was needed on a pneumatic system in Dunedin, where the piping was cut in several places to retrieve samples that had become blocked.

At the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, a pneumatic tube work committee meets biweekly to review problems and concerns. Their troubleshooting guide is laminated and blu-tacked near each sending/receiving station.

Pneumatic tube company Pevco have recently released an automated mobile email alert system for hospital engineers, while their Houston branch offers three day training for hospital engineers including hands-on maintenance scenarios.

Pneumatic tube engineers need to be creative. In her Cabinet article, Molly Wright Steenson writes how in Paris, in the times of the Poste Pneumatique, a tubiste would relieve blockages in the system by reversing air pressure and drawing the carrier back to the station. When this didn't work, the tubiste would try another tactic - fire a pistol into the tube which created a sound wave that allowed calculation of the location of the blocked item. Surgery of this system required sloshing through Paris' sewers to the area of blockage.

For those interested in clogging tubes and engineering creativity more generally, you will want to see Gregory Whitmore's wonderful video about blockages and all other kinds of monitoring, maintenance and mayhem associated with pneumatic tube systems on Roosevelt Island, New York. The video was made as part of the Fast Trash exhibition in New York in 2010 (read the pneumatic post about the exhibition here and for more about maintenance here). Here is a sneak peak:

Nature Abhors a Vacuum :: EXCERPT - "JAMS." from gregory whitmore on Vimeo.

All images in this post are stills from this video. See here for the longer version.

DIY pneumatic tube system

First there was steampunk, then there was biopunk, and now there is vacuumpunk:

For the less successful skittle experiment, click here.

pneumatic tube classic of the week 1

This great bit of footage from Brazil, where a little bit of re-hosing has a magical effect, is the first post in my 'classics' category. The 'pneumatic tube classic of the week', following from the 'pneumatic tube map of the week', will be a post about a classic book, film, cartoon, TV show or other media about pneumatic tube systems.

Please send in any of your favourite pneumatic tube classics to be potentially included on the list!

Video from YouTube.