A mechanical precursor to e-mail

I read Molly Wright Steenson’s blog girlwonder on an irregular basis – she has lived in Italy, India and several other places – which is pretty unusual for an American, and she’s interested in modern architecture, various aspects of using the web, and design. Which are all things she blogs about.

She published a short video a few months ago of an ignite eTech talk she gave (these talks are limited to 5 minutes and the slides advance automatically every 15 seconds!), about the use of pneumatic tubes in Paris and the USA in the period from the mid 19th century until the mid 20th century. You might have seen these in use in banks, chemists and businesses delivering money and paperwork, if you are old enough. I can remember seeing them in my childhood, but they died out in the 1950′s and 1960′s.

These tubes were surprisingly widespread. In Paris in 1945 they had a 450 km network of tubes running along the walls of the sewers delivering telegrams all over the city. The screenshot in the picture above shows just how many there were in some sewers.

I didn’t know that if tube-post got stuck in the tubes, they could identify to within a couple of meters where the blockage had occurred by firing a pistol down the pipe work and measuring the sound-waves! An interesting talk, worth investing five minutes to your time to listen to.