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This is a pneumatic tube dispatch. If you're under a certain age, then it's possible

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you've never seen one of these systems in person. But for over a century, they were relatively commonplace.

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Believe it or not, they're still very popular in certain industries.

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And there are still thinkers and dreamers talking about bringing them back

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in new and innovative applications. Pneumatic tube transport works through the application

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of an incredibly simple concept. If you put a cylindrical object in a gas impermeable tube,

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then you can move that object through the tube by either creating enough gas pressure on one end

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to push it or by creating a partial vacuum on the other side to pull it.

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Think of it like a blueberry and a drinking straw. If you suck hard enough, you can pull it towards you.

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And if you blow hard enough, you can shoot somebody's eye up. An odd thing about pneumatic tubes

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is that they still tend to be used as a visual shorthand

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for futuristic technology, both in classic television shows like The Jetsons

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and in relatively modern works like Futurama.

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The technology itself, however, is pretty old. The idea of using air pressure to move cargo

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through sealed tubes was first suggested by English engineer George Medhurst in 1799.

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And in 1824, some dude named Valence

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created the first experimental pneumatic railway,

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or you prefer, the old Hyperloop.

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There were two major variants, one where the passenger car sat inside a large tube

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and acted as the piston, and a more popular version where the passenger car

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is connected to a piston that is being pushed along inside a smaller tube.

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There were even several successful commercial atmospheric rail lines in Europe

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through the mid-19th century, despite the occasional technical issue,

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such as the leather flap grease with beesbacks and animal fat that they used

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to keep the metal tubing around the piston shut, getting stiff in cold weather and failing to seal properly.

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Also, the smell-attracted rats that would chew on the leather and crawl up inside the machinery.

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Primary advantage of atmospheric rail is that the carriages are relatively lightweight.

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This means that they didn't need as much energy to propel them, and they could typically handle steeper inclines

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than conventional rail. These issues, however, became less and less relevant

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as steam engines became smaller, more powerful and more efficient,

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leading to atmospheric rail being largely superseded

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before it could become truly popular. A small number of atmospheric rails

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have been built since and are still in use, but they don't typically use beef tallow anymore.

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The pneumatic tube dispatch, created in 1853, fared significantly better than pneumatic rail

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because it allowed for rapid communication and distribution of parcels.

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It was decades before popular adoption of the telephone and the electric telegraph was extremely expensive,

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in part because becoming an operator took months to learn and years to master.

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Think about it. If you had to pay by the word to get a trained professional

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to type out every single character, you would definitely text less.

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For complicated documents or for messages only going a short distance,

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it was typically cheaper and easier to just pay someone to run it over.

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Pneumatic tubes were an ideal middle ground, faster and more secure than a runner,

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but far easier to operate than a telegraph. In fact, the first pneumatic dispatch was a 660 foot line

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between the local telegram office and the London Stock Exchange

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as a replacement for all the people running back and forth between the two buildings all day.

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It was sometimes envisioned that these tube systems would one day carry heavy freight across middle distances.

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But that idea was superseded by the invention of the practical internal combustion engine

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and the modern truck. People dreamt of putting human passengers

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and animals inside the capsules and someone even successfully transported a live cat

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through a pneumatic tube. Cat was not a fan. Throughout the early 20th century,

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the pneumatic dispatch saw wide popularity in large buildings and complexes,

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especially banks, factories, hospitals and post offices, places where a lot of small objects need to be moved

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quickly and securely throughout the workday. Major cities throughout Europe and North America

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like Berlin, Chicago, Paris, New York and Vienna all had extensive pneumatic tube networks.

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The great pneumatic postal system of Prague began in 1889

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and closed due to flood damage in just 2002. The first pneumatic trash collection system

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was installed in a Swedish hospital in 1961

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and thousands of similar systems still operate across Europe and Asia.

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There's even one from the 70s in Disney's Magic Kingdom and another throughout Roosevelt Island in New York.

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But if they're that useful, why aren't they still everywhere now?

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As cool as they are, the truth is there are a few big problems with these kinds of systems.

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The biggest is that they're relatively expensive to install and can be difficult to maintain,

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especially if something gets stuck in one of the pipes, which something often does, typically due to user error.

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People who don't understand the system frequently fail to close the capsules correctly

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or will put items into the system that it was never meant to handle.

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Just ask the sanitation workers at Roosevelt Island who have found entire hockey sticks, mattresses

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and bed frames shoved into their poor unprepared pipes.

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This of course leads to clogs, which have to be addressed before the tube

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and question can function normally again, typically by snaking the line from the nearest access point.

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It wasn't until the 1980s when the high tech tool of the future, the fax machine became ubiquitous in modern offices

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that the popularity of the pneumatic dispatch started to slide.

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A lot of examples that are still around today are frankly legacy systems that will one day be retired

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when they start to wear out, like the pneumatic bank drive-throughs dotting the US

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that will one day be replaced by simple ATMs. Those systems that haven't been modernized

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in the last half century or so are very hard to repair

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because the parts and the knowledge needed to fix them just aren't around anymore.

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But some of these systems aren't legacy systems at all.

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They're very much modern because while the fax machine gave us a way

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to securely send an exact copy of a document anywhere

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in an instant, it never solved the problem of how to quickly take a blood sample from a nurse's station

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and deliver it to a lab two floors down and 100 feet away,

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or how to quickly and safely move a rapidly decaying

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nuclear isotope for testing. Many organizations still have needs

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that justify installing pneumatic dispatch systems. And because they're not open to the public,

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they can train everyone who interacts with them and prevent them from trying to shove

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an entire bed through the system. A modern pneumatic dispatch can shoot an object

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three stories up in under two seconds without splattering it against the ceiling,

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which is a feet, a conveyor belt or dumbwaiter would struggle to match.

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They're still very common in hospitals and factories and in Vancouver where we're located,

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you can actually find these systems in some marijuana dispensaries.

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According to a representative of City Cannabis, the government requires many of their products

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to be securely stored at all times. And the pneumatic dispatch system allows these products

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to be quickly and efficiently transported to the front of the store,

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while also acting as a fun novelty for customers as they watch their pot whizz overhead.

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There are also local companies that retrofit homes with pneumatic elevators,

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which still have advantages over hydraulic elevators, namely that they take up less space

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and don't require the creation of a pit or a machine room.

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Some applications for pneumatic transportation were only invented in the 21st century.

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In 2011, Woosh Technologies tested the salmon cannon,

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a pneumatic system based on fruit harvesting equipment, which is intended to help fish safely bypass dams

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by sucking them up and firing them over the top

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at 22 miles per hour, baby. It's not clear if we will one day see

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pneumatic high-speed rail implemented on any broad scale,

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or if one day we too will shoot ourselves up to our offices

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like confused fish. What is clear though, is that pneumatic tube transport is still far more

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than just a relic of the past. Thanks for watching guys. If you liked this video,

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maybe you'd like our video on Amish computers.

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They exist. Very cool.