Watching my parents go through the drive in bank teller using pneumatic tubes to send items back and forth is such a fun cool memory I have from my childhood. In a funny way, it still feels way more “sci-fi future tech” than pressing a touch screen and wait 4 seconds for a change to happen… or not.
I did some contracting at a bank and an employee told me about a problem they had with their pneumatic tubes: A customer had taken the carrier with them when they drove off, so the teller put their spare into the tube and continued working. A short while later the customer realized they had absconded with the carrier and returned to the drive-thru and put it back into the tube. The next customer put their deposit in the carrier and sent it off - the teller received it and said "Sir, there's nothing in here." and held up the empty carrier to the window to show them. And sent it back. The customer took the carrier out, held it up to show his documents in it, and sent it back into the bank .. only to arrive empty again. They eventually figured out there were two carriers in the tube.
They still use those here. My local bank had candies, like tootsie rolls, that they'd send with withdrawals if parents let them know they had kids in the car. It was always such a treat to watch the cool pneumatic tube and then get a sugary treat to top it all off.
I think my local bank branch still has a drive through and (I assume) pneumatic tubes although I've never used it. But then I think I've used the ATM once in maybe the past three or four years.
When I used to work at a bank, the staff at a branch that still used tubes at the drive through would complain about how hard they are to maintain. Apparently they were down to a single contractor in the whole county who knew how to fix them, and he was always threatening to retire soon.
Stanford Hospitals have a big pneumatic tube system. [1] Miles of tubes. Modern systems have automatic switches and tracking. Many large hospital complexes have such systems.
> In its full glory, the pneumatic tubes covered a 27-mile route, connecting 23 post offices.
Berlin once had a 400 km tube mail system [0], which was in service from 1865 until 1976 (West Berlin) or 1986 (East Berlin). Before WWII, there were nearly 8 million items send via tube mail per year. Several hotels, large department stores or newspapers had their own private connection [1, 2, 3]
Very cool and it's a nice site too (I've only been to NYC once so it's good fodder for longing back). However this sentence made my alarm bells go off:
The first pneumatic tube mail system was installed in Philadelphia (sorry New York) in 1893. New York City’s came in 1897.
A quick check on Wikipedia [1] lists a bunch of earlier systems in Europe, but perhaps there's a silent "in the US" in the original article. That always seems odd to me though, when you're a website focusing on one of the world's top tourist attractions and writing in an international language. Oh well.
I worked in a factory where automotive scrap metal was whisked away in a similar vacuum system. When the system broke, it resulted in mounds of scrap aluminum piling in the basement and it was a rac to be cleaned by hand; I’d hate to see similar with garbage.
Was probably the inspiration for the movie “Brazil”, released in 1985 where the pneumatic tube system is part of the complicated and extensive "Central Services" administration.
Incidentally Brazil is for today's digital dystopia what Koyaanisqatsi (1982) is for environmental instability.
Readit News
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Also remember the local science museum had a pneumatic tube system to play with and we'd sit there with that for some time.
Here's what a router looks like.[2]
[1] https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2010/01/gone-with-the...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1ogS5EQpV0
Berlin once had a 400 km tube mail system [0], which was in service from 1865 until 1976 (West Berlin) or 1986 (East Berlin). Before WWII, there were nearly 8 million items send via tube mail per year. Several hotels, large department stores or newspapers had their own private connection [1, 2, 3]
[0] https://www.berliner-unterwelten.de/fileadmin/_processed_/2/...
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohrpost_in_Berlin
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohrpost_in_Berlin
[3] https://www.berliner-unterwelten.de/verein/forschungsthema-u...
The first pneumatic tube mail system was installed in Philadelphia (sorry New York) in 1893. New York City’s came in 1897.
A quick check on Wikipedia [1] lists a bunch of earlier systems in Europe, but perhaps there's a silent "in the US" in the original article. That always seems odd to me though, when you're a website focusing on one of the world's top tourist attractions and writing in an international language. Oh well.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube#In_postal_servi...
https://www.swisslog-healthcare.com/en-gb/company/blog/how-a...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuSDdJIcmHU
(Brazil, 1985, by Terry Gilliam)
Edit: oh, nologic01 had already mentioned it.
Incidentally Brazil is for today's digital dystopia what Koyaanisqatsi (1982) is for environmental instability.
Can you elaborate there?
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