this is a pneumatic tube dispatch if you're under a certain age then it's
possible you've never seen one of these systems in person but for over a century
they were relatively Common Place believe it or not they're still very
popular in certain industries and there are still thinkers and dreamers talking
about bringing them back in new and Innovative applications pneumatic tube
transport Works through the application of an incredibly simple concept if you
put a cylindrical object in a gas impermeable tube then you can move that
object through the tube by either creating enough gas pressure on one end
to push it or by creating a partial vacuum on the other side to pull it
think of it like a blueberry and a drinking straw if you suck hard enough
you can pull it towards you and if you blow hard enough you can shoot
somebody's eye up an odd thing about pneumatic tubes is that they still tend
to be used as a visual shorthand for futuristic technology both in classic
television shows like the Jetson and in relatively modern works like futur AMA
the technology itself however is pretty old the idea of using air pressure to
move cargo through sealed tubes was first suggested by English engineer
George medhurst in 1799 and in 1824 some
dude named Vance created the first experimental pneumatic Railway or if you
prefer Ye Old hyper Loop there were two major variants one where the passenger
car sat inside a large tube and acted as the piston and a more popular version
where the passenger car is connected to a piston that is being pushed along
inside a smaller tube the there were even several successful commercial
atmospheric Rail lines in Europe through the mid 19th century despite the
occasional technical issues such as the leather flap grease with beeswax and
animal fat that they Ed to keep the metal tubing around the Piston shut
getting stiff in cold weather and failing to seal properly also the smell
attracted rats that would chew on the leather and crawl up inside the Machinery primary advantage of
atmospheric rail is that the carriages are relatively lightweight this means
that they didn't need as much energy to propel them and they could typically
handle steeper inclines than conventional rail these issues however
became less and less relevant as Steam Engines became smaller more powerful and
more efficient leading to atmospheric rail being largely superseded before it
could become truly popular a small number of atmospheric rails have been
built since and are still in use but they don't typically use beef Tallow
anymore the pneumatic tube dispatch created in 1853 fared significantly
better than pneumatic rail because it allowed for Rapid communication and
distribution of parcels it was decades before popular
adoption of the telephone and the electric telegraph was extremely
expensive in part because becoming an operator took months to learn and years
to master think about it if you had to pay by the word to get a trained
professional to type out every single character you would definitely taex less
for complicated documents or for messages only going a short distance it
was typically cheaper and easier to just pay someone to run it over pneumatic
tubes were an ideal Middle Ground fast and more secure than a runner but far
easier to operate than a telegraph in fact the first pneumatic dispatch was a
660t line between the local telegram office and the London Stock Exchange as
a replacement for all the people running back and forth between the two buildings
all day it was sometimes envisioned that these tube systems would one day carry
heavy Freight across middle distances but that idea was superseded by the
invention of the Practical internal combustion engine and the modern truck
people dreamt of putting human pass ERS and animals inside the capsules and
someone even successfully transported a live cat through a pneumatic tube cat
was not a fan throughout the early 20th century the pneumatic dispatch saw wide
popularity in large buildings and complexes especially Banks factories
hospitals and post offices places where a lot of small objects need to be moved
quickly and securely throughout the workday major cities throughout Europe
and North America like Berlin Chicago Paris New York and Vienna all had
extensive pneumatic tube networks the great pneumatic post system of Prague
began in 1889 and closed due to flood damage in just 2002 the first pneumatic
trash collection system was installed in a Swedish Hospital in 1961 and thousands
of similar systems still operate across Europe and Asia there's even one from
the 70s in Disney's Magic Kingdom and another throughout Roosevelt Island in
New York but if they're that useful why
aren't they still everywhere now we'll tell you right after we think I fix it
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link below as cool as they are the truth is there are a few big problems with
these kinds of systems the biggest is that they're relatively expensive to
install and can be difficult to maintain especially if something gets stuck in
one of the pipes which something often does typically due to user error people
who don't understand the system frequently fail to close the capsules
correctly or will put items into the system that it was never meant to handle
just ask the sanitation workers at Roosevelt Island who found entire hockey
sticks mattresses and bed frames shoved into their poor unprepared pipes this of
course leads to clogs which have to be addressed before the tube in question
can function normally again typically by snaking the line from the nearest access
point it wasn't until the 1980s when the high-tech tool of the future the fax
machine became ubiquitous in modern offices that the popularity of the
pneumatic dispatch started to slide a lot of examples that are still around
today are frankly Legacy systems that will one day be retired when they start
to wear out like the pneumatic Bank drive-throughs dotting the US that will
one day be replaced by simple ATMs those systems that haven't been modernized in
the last half century or so are very hard to to repair because the parts and
the knowledge needed to fix them just aren't around anymore but some of these
systems aren't Legacy systems at all they're very much modern because while
the fax machine gave us a way to securely send an exact copy of a
document anywhere in an instant it never solved the problem of how to quickly
take a blood sample from a nurses station and deliver it to a lab two
floors down and 100 ft away or how to quickly and safely move a rapidly
decaying nuclear isotope for testing many organizations still have needs that
justify installing new A atic dispatch systems and because they're not open to
the public they can train everyone who interacts with them and prevent them
from trying to shove an entire bed through the system a modern pneumatic
dispatch can shoot an object three stories up in under two seconds without
splattering it against the ceiling which is a feet a conveyor belt or dumb waiter
would struggle to match they're still very common in hospitals and factories
and in Vancouver where we're located you can actually find these systems in some
marijuana dispensaries according to a representative of of City cannabis the
government requires many of their products to be securely stored at all
times and the pneumatic dispatch system allows these products to be quickly and
efficiently transported to the front of the store while also acting as a fun
novelty for customers as they watch their pot whiz overhead there are also
local companies that retrofit homes with pneumatic elevators which still have
advantages over hydraulic elevators namely that they take up less space and
don't require the creation of a pit or machine room some applications for
pneumatic Transportation were only invented in the 21st century in 2011
whoosh Technologies tested the salmon Cannon a pneumatic system based on fruit
harvesting equipment which is intended to help fish safely bypass dams by
sucking them up and firing them over the
top at 22 mph baby it's not clear if we
will one day see pneumatic High-Speed Rail implemented on any broad scale or
if one day we too will shoot ourselves up to our offices like confused fish
what is clear though is that pneumatic tube transport is still far more than
just a relic of the past thanks for watching guys if you like this video maybe you like our video on Amish
computers they exist very cool