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 commonplace.
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 Jetsons
and in relatively modern works like Futurama.
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 Valence
created the first experimental pneumatic railway,
or you prefer, the old Hyperloop.
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.
There were even several successful commercial atmospheric rail lines in Europe
through the mid-19th century, despite the occasional technical issue,
such as the leather flap grease with beesbacks and animal fat that they used
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leading to atmospheric rail being largely superseded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 text 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, faster and more secure than a runner,
but far easier to operate than a telegraph. In fact, the first pneumatic dispatch was a 660 foot 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 passengers
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 postal 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?
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 have 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
and 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 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 nurse's station
and deliver it to a lab two floors down and 100 feet away,
or how to quickly and safely move a rapidly decaying
nuclear isotope for testing. Many organizations still have needs
that justify installing pneumatic 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 dumbwaiter 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 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 whizz 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 a machine room.
Some applications for pneumatic transportation were only invented in the 21st century.
In 2011, Woosh 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 miles per hour, 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 liked this video,
maybe you'd like our video on Amish computers.
They exist. Very cool.