Latest / Ridiculous History / Pneumatic Tubes: The 'Futuristic' Transport System That's Over 150-Years-Old

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Pneumatic Tubes: The 'Futuristic' Transport System That's Over 150-Years-Old · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: tuning in now. I don't want to date myself here.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Ben, by the way, But does anybody else remember
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  Speaker 1: going to drive through banks and putting like envelopes and
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  Speaker 1: checks and stuff and those little tubes? I do do
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  Speaker 1: I get to be a part of anyone? You are,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: You're You're not just anyone, You're someone. I'm null. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: you know, it's fine. There are still some banks, maybe
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  Speaker 1: they're like a bandoned or something that's still have those
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  Speaker 1: those tubes for the drive through area. But I absolutely
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  Speaker 1: remember that. I remember. I thought it was fun when
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  Speaker 1: I was a kid driving through with my mom. She'd
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  Speaker 1: let me put the thing in the tube and stick
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  Speaker 1: it in the little you know, a little doc I
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  Speaker 1: guess you could call it, and then you push a button,
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  Speaker 1: I think, and then it goes Yeah, it does make
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  Speaker 1: that thump sound. Um it. Actually, I just recently saw
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  Speaker 1: the movie Elf for the first time, and there is
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  Speaker 1: a pretty big sequence that takes place in the mail
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  Speaker 1: room of a New York City high rise office building,
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  Speaker 1: and it's all about pneumatic tubes. They got the tubes.
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  Speaker 1: They got the tubes. Uh, super producer Casey Pegram. Do
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  Speaker 1: you remember those uh those drive through bank tubes. I
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  Speaker 1: have the same memory as nol. I never did it myself,
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  Speaker 1: but as a kid going through the driveway with my mom,
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  Speaker 1: and I remember getting like a lollipop or something back
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  Speaker 1: the other way. Yeah, exactly, you get your receipt and
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  Speaker 1: a lollipop. Yeah. And if we drove through with my
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  Speaker 1: dog in the car sometime there'd be like a doggy
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  Speaker 1: treat as well. That's so, that is so endearing. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I think it's one of those, at least for the
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  Speaker 1: three of us. It's one of those, uh little pleasures
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  Speaker 1: that your parents give you up there with like the stereo,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: A typical getting to lick the batter when making cookies
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  Speaker 1: or cake or stuff. I'm more of a fan of
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: licking the battery. Oh yeah, yeah, you're one of those.
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  Speaker 1: Makes me feel alive, you know, getting that little jolt.
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  Speaker 1: Do you ever do the fork in the outlet? I
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  Speaker 1: did that. Don't do what? Yeah, doesn't want to kill you? Well,
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  Speaker 1: I'm here black for that. Well. The thing is that
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  Speaker 1: while our experience with these pneumatic tubes for many of
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  Speaker 1: us maybe relegated to bank drive throughs. They actually do
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  Speaker 1: have a surprising history. Get this, folks. For more than
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  Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty years, pneumatic tube systems have not
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  Speaker 1: just been carrying mail. They've been carrying people, They've been
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  Speaker 1: carrying cats. People have been thinking about the idea of
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  Speaker 1: using pneumatic tubes for transport since at least eighteen twelve.
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  Speaker 1: But here's the thing, this was actually at one point
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  Speaker 1: put into practice. Yeah, I mean it was sort of
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  Speaker 1: con that are like the wave of the future. Um.
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  Speaker 1: And now you think about it and it almost has
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  Speaker 1: sort of a steampunk vibe, you know, the idea of
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  Speaker 1: of people traveling in tubes. There's a Tenacious D song
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  Speaker 1: where they say, uh talking about the city Hall, I
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  Speaker 1: think and they say, in the future people will travel
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  Speaker 1: in tubes. That's all I remember. Um, And they you know,
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  Speaker 1: in London they refer to the the metro system as
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  Speaker 1: as tubes as the tube. The tube. Yeah, mind the gap,
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  Speaker 1: Mind the gap. Don't get caught in that gap between
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  Speaker 1: the rest of your life and the tube. So if
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  Speaker 1: we go back to the science of how a pneumatic
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  Speaker 1: tube works, then we're really talking about the concept of vacuum,
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  Speaker 1: just vacuum cleaners, but you know, a vacuum, that thing
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  Speaker 1: nature of wares. You guys, remember the first experiments on
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  Speaker 1: this that we have documented date all the way back
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  Speaker 1: to the ninth century. A D or c. E. Whichever
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  Speaker 1: you prefer, philosopher named al Farabi used handheld plungers in water,
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  Speaker 1: and through his experiments he realized the volume of air
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  Speaker 1: would expand to fill any available space. Yeah, that's right.
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  Speaker 1: There's a great article from gizmoto dot com a brief
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  Speaker 1: history of the pneumatic to transport systems that explains the
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  Speaker 1: very thing and that very discovery. And then after um
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  Speaker 1: alpha Robbie's realization about the way vacuum works, scientists were
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  Speaker 1: able to actually take this concept and manufacture this very
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  Speaker 1: phenomenon um using those concepts that he uh he figured out. Yeah, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: here's what they found, and they said that they can
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  Speaker 1: if you expand the volume of any container, you reduce
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  Speaker 1: the pressure there and you can create a partial vacuum.
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  Speaker 1: But as soon as air pushes inside that you know,
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  Speaker 1: propelled by atmospheric pressure. Uh, you know, the vacuum is gone.
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  Speaker 1: Unless you repeatedly seal the contain or pump the air out,
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  Speaker 1: expanded again and close it off. If you do that,
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  Speaker 1: you can create a sealed vacuum. So let's let's fast
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  Speaker 1: forward with help from the Atlantic, who also has a
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  Speaker 1: brief history of pneumatic tubes, to sixteen fifty. There's a
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  Speaker 1: German scientist with this fantastic name. I thought you'd love
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  Speaker 1: this one, Otto von Gurk Gurriki. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: let's see if what four of O has to say
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  Speaker 1: about that. I bet you it's not gonna know. Um,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: let's see we like doing miss live on air and
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  Speaker 1: four of those says yeah, yeah, sort of like Garnica. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: but Gelica, Yeah exactly. So he invented the world's first
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  Speaker 1: artificial vacuum. He took two copper hemispheres with rims that
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  Speaker 1: fit really tightly together. He sealed the rim with Greece,
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  Speaker 1: and then he pumped all the air out of it.
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  Speaker 1: He had to invent, by the way, a special pump
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  Speaker 1: to do this. And once he had created this first
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  Speaker 1: artificial vacuum, he was surprised by how powerful the hold
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  Speaker 1: on it was. He even got a team of get this,
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  Speaker 1: eight horses on on one hemisphere of this big copper
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  Speaker 1: globe he made, and another eight horses on the other side,
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  Speaker 1: the other hemisphere, and then he, you know, he tried
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  Speaker 1: to get a team of horses to literally pull these
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  Speaker 1: hemispheres apart, and it didn't work. So not even not
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  Speaker 1: even sixteen horses could tear this apart. And this went
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  Speaker 1: viral in Europe, or their equivalent of viral. Right. The
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  Speaker 1: founder of modern chemistry, Robert Boyle, even heard about it
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  Speaker 1: over in England. People weren't able to replicate it because
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  Speaker 1: it was expensive. And we'll see that there are some
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  Speaker 1: technological challenges with uh pneumatic engines even in the modern day.
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  Speaker 1: But um, as the Atlantic and Gizmoto report, Boyle was,
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  Speaker 1: as it turns out, from a pretty wealthy and influential family. Um.
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  Speaker 1: He was the son of the Earl of Cork. I
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: gotta wonder if corks were named after the Earl of
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  Speaker 1: Cork or if it was probably of course, But he's
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  Speaker 1: a silver spooner, he's a big time that's a good one. UM.
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  Speaker 1: So he was able to finance um, this quite expensive contraption.
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  Speaker 1: UM and he did just that. He UM got a
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  Speaker 1: little help to do it though, a guy by the
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  Speaker 1: name of Robert Hook right right to the creator of
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  Speaker 1: micrographia or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies met by
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  Speaker 1: magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries there. Yeah, this is
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  Speaker 1: this is a tome um that outlines some pretty interesting
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  Speaker 1: and at the time very forward thinking, uh, principles of
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  Speaker 1: using micro scopes to examine natural phenomenon. Also, if you
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: ever are on a show like Jeopardy, you'll be interested
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  Speaker 1: to know that micrographia is the tone in which we
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  Speaker 1: see the biological term sell used for the first time.
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  Speaker 1: That's where they coin it. So imagine that the more
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  Speaker 1: you know the sound cue or something like that, I
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  Speaker 1: think we'll get suited if we use it, but you
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  Speaker 1: won't get the drift. And Hook was not only, you know,
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  Speaker 1: the writer of this book and all these principles. He
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  Speaker 1: actually invented the compound microscope and a lot of the
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  Speaker 1: kind of theory behind how it works and the ability
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  Speaker 1: to combine two lenses to see very small objects as
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  Speaker 1: opposed to the telescope, which is a different principle that
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  Speaker 1: allows you to view very large objects that are very
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  Speaker 1: very far away. So I like that. I like that contrast.
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  Speaker 1: So the thing about Hook is Not only was he
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  Speaker 1: very smart guy, but he was also a little bit
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  Speaker 1: of a gearhead, a bit of a grease monkey. And
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  Speaker 1: it's a good thing that he was on Boyle's team
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  Speaker 1: because boils design for this artificial vacuum was clunky, it
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  Speaker 1: was notoriously cantankerous, and oftentimes, from what we understand, Hook
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  Speaker 1: was literally the only person who could get the thing
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  Speaker 1: to actually work. It didn't take long before other scientists
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  Speaker 1: and other engineers figured out how to apply vacuum technology
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  Speaker 1: to their inventions, and one of the most notable early
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  Speaker 1: examples of this was the pneumatic tube transport system used
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  Speaker 1: to deliver messages. This idea first came to us from
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  Speaker 1: a Scottish engineer named William Murdock, and that was back
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  Speaker 1: in the early nineteenth century. By the late nineteenth century,
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  Speaker 1: by the eighteen nineties, there were networks of pneumatic tubes
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  Speaker 1: shipping mail along under city streets and the tubes could
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  Speaker 1: hold up to six letters, which makes me think they
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  Speaker 1: were larger than the tubes you would see at your
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  Speaker 1: local bank, and they traveled pretty quickly, around thirty five
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  Speaker 1: miles an hour. And you saw the first introduction of
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  Speaker 1: such tubes in Philadelphia, Boston, Brooklyn, New York, uh and
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  Speaker 1: Chicago and St. Louis in around eight three. And you know,
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  Speaker 1: this is kind of what we think of as the
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  Speaker 1: version of this technology that stuck around, because it's really
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  Speaker 1: not much different than ultimately what became those neumatic tubes
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  Speaker 1: we think of at the banks right right, just on
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  Speaker 1: a larger scale, by nine, just those six cities alone
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  Speaker 1: had a total of fifty six miles of tubes that
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  Speaker 1: were that were active, that were transporting parcels and letters.
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  Speaker 1: And this was all under the street. You wouldn't be
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  Speaker 1: walking by and just here a distant from as the
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  Speaker 1: tube passed you at thirty. Logistical question, um, just just
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  Speaker 1: uh I have for you, Ben, is would you need
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  Speaker 1: psych sort of the equivalent of like an air traffic
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  Speaker 1: controller for these tubes? I mean, if you've got like
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  Speaker 1: that long of you know, network of these things, wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: you risk potentially them getting clogged up or two tubes
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  Speaker 1: banging into each other? Or how how that work? I
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  Speaker 1: guess if you're sending one, it's always going to be
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  Speaker 1: ahead of the other one, But are they being fed
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  Speaker 1: by other other location? Kind of I wonder? I don't
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  Speaker 1: And this is just me asking dumb questions that I
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  Speaker 1: don't have the answer to which I know people love.
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  Speaker 1: It's a it's a hub system, so you would shift
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  Speaker 1: something to maybe a central hub, and if we're speculating,
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  Speaker 1: there would be human beings in that hub who would
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  Speaker 1: get a tube and then see its destination and put
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  Speaker 1: it in another tube for that destination. Right. And the
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  Speaker 1: closest thing we can see that I that I've witnessed
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  Speaker 1: that is that very seen in Elf and any other
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  Speaker 1: movie that they see a New York City mail room.
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  Speaker 1: That's what's going on down there because they're using tubes
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  Speaker 1: to transport things to different floors in the offices, etcetera. Um,
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  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of sorting going on and you know,
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  Speaker 1: the hub system and then putting it into the right
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  Speaker 1: destination so it ends up where it needs to go.
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  Speaker 1: And it plays a very pivotal role in the film
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  Speaker 1: zill as well. There's a mix up with a peumatic
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  Speaker 1: tube and uh really messes up that tuttle and buttle
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Guys Lives. That's right Tuttle to the old Tuttle buttle
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  Speaker 1: mix up from Terry Gilliams Brazil Casey on the case
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  Speaker 1: dropping the film knowledge. If you haven't seen that one,
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  Speaker 1: that's a really really fun movie. I have got some
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  Speaker 1: problems now with the director. Did you hear what he
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  Speaker 1: did recently? Is Gilliam canceled? Uh? He's, he's he said
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  Speaker 1: some stuff that felt very Guilliam. He's, he's he's got
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  Speaker 1: the full boomer mindset, you know, he's he's a much
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  Speaker 1: older guy, and he's he's not with the times. Let's say, yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: but maybe maybe that's a story for a different day.
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  Speaker 1: He did have a great he did have a great
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  Speaker 1: run with Brazil. No one's arguing that. Here's the thing, though,
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  Speaker 1: you know one group, one industry group that will always
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  Speaker 1: be an early adopter for something that could help with
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  Speaker 1: a profit, it's gonna be Wall Street. So noeumatic post
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  Speaker 1: systems began as delivery services for the stock market, and
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: think about it. You know, it's all about timing, right,
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  Speaker 1: It's all about the trade, and so you want to
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  Speaker 1: know when to buy, the best moment to buy, the
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: best moment to sell. And they would, you know, they
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  Speaker 1: like you didn't have a chance once the telegraph arose.
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  Speaker 1: You didn't have a chance of making serious money if
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  Speaker 1: you had to send something through post weight days or
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  Speaker 1: weeks for someone to say, Okay, buy it now, even
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: though the price changed, and even telegraphs would get held
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  Speaker 1: up at the telegraphs somewhere between the telegraph office and
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  Speaker 1: the stock exchange, and so a tube could just I'm
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  Speaker 1: gonna turn bump into a verb. A tube could just
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  Speaker 1: vomp a message to the to connect the stock Exchange
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  Speaker 1: to the central station of the Electric Telegraph Company. This
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  Speaker 1: happened in London in eighteen fifty three. They built a
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  Speaker 1: six hundred sixty ft tube to do just that, and
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  Speaker 1: then these things started popping up all around the world.
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  Speaker 1: All Europe was riddled with tubes at a time. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: Slate does a great job of outlining some of these
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  Speaker 1: original pneumatic tubes. Um that are, you know, the networks
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  Speaker 1: of them beneath New York City. And an article by
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  Speaker 1: Ella morton Um that I highly recommend is actually Anatlas
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  Speaker 1: Obscure article that was really on their bloge. Yeah, that's right,
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  Speaker 1: that was republished on Slate. That's right. Yeah, that's right.
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  Speaker 1: Zooming through the tubes, the pneumatic male networks hidden under
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: city streets. So we know that they all started around
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  Speaker 1: the same time or the same era. What some of
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: us might find surprising is that although these systems of
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  Speaker 1: tubes clearly wouldn't last forever, some of them were very
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  Speaker 1: long lived. The one in Paris was in operation until
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  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, and rumor has it again that's from
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  Speaker 1: the Skismotor article that the UK House of Commons still
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  Speaker 1: has a pneumatic tube system in place for its telephones.
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  Speaker 1: And just like an elf, you can find older buildings
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  Speaker 1: in New York that still have at least the skeleton
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  Speaker 1: of those pneumatic male systems in place, so they may
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  Speaker 1: not be working, but you can still see that the
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  Speaker 1: tubes are around. No, could you tell us maybe a
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: little bit about the Big Apples tubes? Yeah, well, first
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: of all, I will say if you do want to
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: check them out. As of February of this article on
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: the Culture trip dot com was published, you can still
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: see UM pneumatic tube systems on display in the the
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: New York Humanities and Social Sciences Library, but after a
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: renovation UM pretty recently they weren't there, no longer operational.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean the Big Apple is lousy with tubes.
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  Speaker 1: They started in around like you said, around the same
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: time as as the other. Um, the other tubes came
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  Speaker 1: into being, and there was a twenty evan mile route
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  Speaker 1: connecting twenty three different New York City post offices. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: And we had them stretching from the east side to
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the west side of Manhattan. Um. You had going a
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: route for going from Bowling Green to Wall Street and
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: then way up north to East Harlem and Manhattanville. Ah. Yes, Manhattanville.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Does that sound very simpson esque? It does. It sounds
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: like sort of like a miniature of Manhattan, like a
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: diminutive Manhattan. It's it's like a one fifth scale of
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Manhattan scale Manhattan and every building has a put putt course.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: And then you have manhattan Burg just a little further away.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: But don't go to Manhattan Town. That place is just
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: a wash in urban decay. You're not welcome there. No
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: one is welcome in Manhattan too. So we know thanks
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: to this article by Robert Cohen writing for the US
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  Speaker 1: Postal Service, that the first cylinder to to travel through
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  Speaker 1: New York the first actual you know, individual tube contained
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: the following, a Bible, a flag, and a copy of
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: the Constitution. The second tube contained a fake peach. Oh,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: that's a that's a head scratcher to what end? Why
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: not send a real peach? Well, Uh, Senator Chauncey Depew,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: who had the street name the Peach it was, was
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: involved in the creation of this system, so this was
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: honoring him. But how much it was a fake peach anyway,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: it was a different time. Yeah, we had some living
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: things transported through there as well, including a black cat,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: and nobody quite knows why. Um that, I don't know.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: They were just making sure. It's sort of like sending
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: a monkey into space, you know, or that what's that
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: space dog? Like like poor like that one didn't go
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: so well. I learned a really heartwarming sad thing about
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: her recently. Yeah that story rex me dude. Yeah, the scientists,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: the sciencest who we're going to send her up into space.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Of course they bonded with her because they're not monsters.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: And the night before they launched, like into space, one
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: of the scientists took her home to meet his family
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: and let she got to play with the kids. At
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: least that's something. Hopefully she remembered that as she was
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: all right, Okay, as far as we know, the black
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: cat was okay. One of my favorite little anecdotes, Um,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: from that same article, as they actually used the tube
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: to send sandwiches um from the Bronx to downtown post offices,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: which means that the people who worked at the post
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: office like, hey, why don't we just I don't want
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: to go outside, Why don't we just tube some sandwiches up?
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: I am envious of that? Now. Can you imagine if
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: we could just tube food? That would be so out
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: of shape. I would just tubes stuff. Well, I mean
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: we have the modern equivalent of that, which is grub
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Hubb or door dash or postmates. Yeah, but you don't
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: have to walk outside if you're just tubes to you
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: do actually they come, you have to walk outside. Just
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: cracked the door, just like put a note just saying
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: leave it on the even on the doormat. I don't
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: want to see another human. Have you done that? Of course? Wow,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: just leave it on the door, Leave it on the door,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: leave it on the doorstep. Not you know, don't just
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: throw it at the door. That would be in poor form.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: That's malicious compliance. If anything. So we know a little
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: bit more about this system. The pneumatic tubes were somewhere
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: on an average between four to six ft underneath the
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: city streets. They were owned by private companies and the
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: city paid them for rent and labor. According to the
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: author of the works, Kate Asher, this system wasn't perfect.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: It had high operating cost and Asher attributes these high
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: operating costs to its eventual downfall in New York by incording.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: This is an excerpt from the works. The federal government
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: considered the rental payments made by the Post Office to
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: be exorbitant, and they said, we have to find a
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: new alternative with a greater capacity for transport. That ended
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: up being the automobile. Hey, Betton, you're probably wondering how
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: how much were the annual rental payments. They were pretty steep.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: In nineteen eighteen, it was seventeen thousand dollars per mile
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: per year. So it's not seventeen thousand dollars for the
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: whole thing, it's seventeen thousand dollars for one mile. You
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: can see the argument there. It does feel very expensive.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: But contractors and some other stakeholders didn't want the tube
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: to go away. They were making money hand over vacuum,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: and they a bunch of contractors got together and successfully
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: lobbied for the reinstatement of the pneumatic mail service in
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: nineteen two, so it was just out of commission from
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: eighteen to twenty two, and then it continued on until
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: about nineteen fifty. Read the Parisian system which lasted. You know,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: as we said, tilt covered a lot longer distance two,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: didn't it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like two sixty nine miles.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: That's crazy. So casey um, is Paris a a proportionately
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: larger geographic area than New York City. It's it's New
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: York is way way bigger. So why why why why
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: was the Why was the route in Paris so much longer?
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Do you think? I guess because it was criss crossing
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: all over the place, right, that must be sort of
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: like how you have miles and miles of stuff inside you. Yeah,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: that's that's that's a good point, because I guess it
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: seemed like Paris um really nailed it a little more,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: and maybe it was more functional and it was less
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: of a novelty, like they were really using it much
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: more functionally than New York when in New York it
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: was maybe a little bit more of like a I
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: don't know, what do you well? How American is this
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: part of the expense for the New York tubes was
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: due to the size and diameter. The Parisian tubes were,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: I think much more slender. They were. They were not
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: supercise like the New York winds they were. There were
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: only two inches in diameter. So you could send like
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: a letter, you know what I mean. You could not
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: send a cat, not a regular sized cat. You could say,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: maybe like like a miniature cat, like kitten. Yeah, cat,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: that's where I was. That's the one. I could just
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: send a litter of kittens though. That seems cruel. No,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: that seems not just one these tubes, I mean, where
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: any of them? So tell me again? The diameter of
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: been only two inches, so it really was just designed
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: for sending like handheld items. Yeah, I don't even think
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: you could fit a kitten in there. Have we talked
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: yet about the notion of sending larger cargo through pneumatic tubes? Yes,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: we absolutely should. You see, why stop with a fake peach?
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Why stop with a real cat? Why not go all
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: the way? Why not make a pneumatic transport system for
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: human passengers? In An inventor named George Medhurst a similar idea.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: He said, Okay, he's one of those people who said
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: we could move things pneumatically using the power of vacuum. Uh.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: His idea was to do it through cast iron pipes,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: which be incredibly heavy. But in eight twelve he said,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: you know what if we just if if the mechanism
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: is sound, we can just build a bigger tube and
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: we can put people in them. We can make u
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: He called them passenger carriages. So the unfortunate thing about
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Medhurst is he never actually got around to building this.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: He didn't have a pump that could create enough power
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: to be a people mover, you know what I mean.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: It reminds me a little bit of the hyper loop,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: the Elon Musk, which isn't powered by air pumps, but
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: the idea is to reduce friction as much as possible,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: and it does travel in in a tube. It's a
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: very high powered um people mover that would go from
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: l A to San Francisco. Yeah. And the thing about
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: that is the science is sound. It would work. It's
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: just got a very high buy in cost, you know.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: And I mean, and that happens anytime you're building infrastructure
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: of that size. We we know that before. By the way,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: just on the record, I've talked about this on a
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: different show. But I'm a huge fan of the hyperloop.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: It's it's crazy. I don't know if it will ever
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: get built, but gosh, I hope it does. We know
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: that before the hyperloop, there were people in the mid
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds that we're trying to build something like this.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: They were called atmospheric railways. They were in Ireland, London
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: and Paris. And the thing about London that's interesting is
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: their system was just designed to transport packages, but it
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: was already large enough to transport people. The Duke of
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Buckingham and several members of the Board of Directors of
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: the London Pneumatic Dispatch actually did go through a pneumatic tube.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: They rode one on October tenth, eighteen six to celebrate
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: a new station, a new just batch station being opened.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: And then later in eighteen sixty four there was a
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: i would say a prototype, a concept you know, that
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: was shown at the Crystal Palace and they said, look,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: we're gonna build a We're gonna build a real version
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: of this. It's gonna connect Waterloo and Charring Cross by
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: running under the tims. And this is interesting because they're
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: this exhibit train was powered by this gigantic fan it
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: was like twenty two ft across, and then that was
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: charged by a steam engine. And so they would they would,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: you know, get the fan up to speed to push
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: the tube, and then they would just they would literally
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: reverse the direction was going into pull the tube. See
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: that seems to be the inherent flaw and large scale
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: versions of this thing that the infrastructure is just that
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: it's super large and requires a quite large um power source,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: uh to generate that much suction, right, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: They were in a situation, the species was in a
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: situation where we were thinking, Okay, the potential here is amazing.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Now we just have to be smart enough to figure
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: out the details. And a lot of people would would
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: see one example of this somewhere in the world or
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: here about it and say I'm gonna build my own version,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to build a better version. This leads
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: us to a fellow named Alfred ELI Beach. He saw
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: these pneumatic two prototypes in London, and he was a
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: resident of the US and and this stuff moved him man.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: He published an article in eighteen forty nine in Scientific
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: American where he said, let's build an underground subway. Uh, well,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: we'll build it under under Broadway. It'll be in Manhattan,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: will use horse drawn cars to carry passengers. So he
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: was already kind of thinking about people moving technology. And
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: by the way, just people mover, I think is maybe
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: something from Epcot that I'm just sort of appropriating. But
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: but things change for Beat when he finds out about
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: pneumatics and he is raving about it in eighteen seventy.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: He says, a tube a car over evolving fan. That's easy,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: it's required. You know. You can picture him sort of
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: like uh tweeling his fingers together. So he built his prototype,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: but it was an above ground model and he brought
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: it out at the American Institute Fair in eighteen sixty seven.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: We have a little bit of a description about this
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: and how it worked. Yeah, that's what she might buy
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: today's standards call a little bit low fi, a little
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: bit d I Y. It was a woman, not d
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: I Y. It was definitely like a big undertaking. But
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: it sounds a little rudimentary, but and a little bit
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: like a novelty honestly, right, Um, So it really wasn't
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: much more than uh six foot uh diameter one foot
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: long wooden too, which seems really problematic with woods. He
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: was a lot of fiction, right well poor as sure
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: wouldn't say of the elements, but also seems like it
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: would just kind of splinter as as as the as
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: the the two moved through it, um or as the
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: whatever the receptacle I guess moved through it. But um
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: it was a small carriage that would hold about ted
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: folks and it would be this car sort of like
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: almost like a funhouse ride, would be pushed through by
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: air pressure created by another one of these giant fans.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: But you know, this is this is like to adopt
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: this kind of this is for lack of this is technology.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: You really have to get buy in, you know, from
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: the folks that are in charge of allowing people to
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: do construction. And that's the that's a big deal. Even
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: today we see it with things like infrastructure and updating
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: you know, uh, fiber cable, and you know, you have
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: to like completely be in business with the city. And
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: he could not make that argument well enough, so he
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: was not allowed to do the construction because he would
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: have had to construct these underground network of these weird
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: wooden tubes. Yeah. Yeah, and there's a little bit of
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: conspiratorial speculation there for Beach, because you'll hear different accounts
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: arguing that the infamous Boss Tweed and his cabal of
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: wealthy elites uh in the neighborhood actually blocked beaches planned
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: because it competed with their own financial interests. Well, that's right,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: and this is like what you would consider a disruptive technology.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, it had the potential to um replace other
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: more traditional modes of transportation. And it's also pretty environmentally
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: uh sound. I guess if you think about it, if
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: it's just using air and not fuel, but I guess
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: you know, those air pumps would have to be powered somehow.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Do we know if they were fuel powered or if
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: it was electric? You know, I wonder it wouldn't matter though,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: because Tweed wasn't going to let them build it. If
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: you believe that, you know, the more the more stationalized
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: accounts of history. But Beach did not give up. He said,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: here's what he did. He in Chicago. He said, Okay,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: I get it, guys. Maybe it's a little off my
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: kit on that one, but let me build you a
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: pneumatic mail delivery system. Let's be reasonable. And he began
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: building it. But he was lying to them. He was
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: actually building an underground pneumatic subway anyway, and in February
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: eighteen seventy he unveils the creation. Everybody loves it because
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: the station is luxurious. There's a grand piano, chandeliers, there's
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: a fountain as Goldfish, which will come into play in
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: a future episode of Ridiculous History. Uh. He charged people
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: twenty five cents to ride a block, and he kept
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: fighting for three years after that to get the permission
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: from the city to extend his line. He wanted it
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: to go all the way to Central Park. He did
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: eventually succeed. He must have made peace with the powers
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: that be, and they might have had much more success,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: might have even expanded further, except a stock market crash occurred,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: the Panic of eighteen seventy three, and no one was
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: trying to spend money on novelty transport like pneumatic tubes.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: And let me clarify there, the place where he actually
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: built this system was in New York. It was not
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: in Chicago. Uh. And still the stock market crash is
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: what crushed him and the idea of building this system
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: actually passed through bills in New York State legislature twice
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy one in eighteen seventy two, but they
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: were vetoed by the state governor. The official reason was
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: that a pneumatic subway wouldn't be able to be enough
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: of a return on investment for the city in the state.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: But again the other reason, the proposed reason, is that
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: the prominent landowners of the area were against it. That
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the wealthy said, right, yeah, yeah, exactly, it's not in
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: my backyard. It's that whole nimby thing. Yeah, well that's
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: not true. That, that's more of that. That's very much true. Yeah,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: that that that refers to folks that don't want a
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: disruption to the status quo or whatever, whether a windmill
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: or a building, a prison nearby, or a nuclear reactor
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: or something like. Yeah. But speaking of more futuristic implementations
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: of this UM, you know, those failures by beach Um
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: didn't entirely kill this technology. We talked a bit about
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: the hyper loop UM and I actually didn't realize that
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: it does use vacuum tube technology. It's something called vact trains. Yeah,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: vacuum tube trains. The hyper loop is based on a
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: lot of this stuff. The the US government also investigated
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: the concept of pneumatic tubes, but they were interested way
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: back in the nineteen sixties in the science of running
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: a vacuum tube train using magnetic levitation technology, and they
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: wanted to build a line between Philly and New York City,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: but ultimately they said, yet again, it's too expensive. And
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: from that point, from Beach to like the modern day,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: we have so many examples of things that really could
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: have taken off, but we're deemed too expensive or never
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: left the drawing board. There was an engineer for Lockheed
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: named L. K. Edwards back in sixty seven ninety seven,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: that is, he said, let's build a Bay Area gravity
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: vacuum transit system. That would be a bag of it
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: or a bag vat if we wanted to cheat. That's
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: pretty funny, is What they have there now is what's
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: called the BAR, which is the Bay Area Rapid Transit System,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: and this was designed to run in hand them with
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: the BART. If I'm not mistaken your spot on my friend, yes,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: And the problem was that this this bag vat sadly
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: was never built. And even Beach himself did not live
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: to see his pneumatic subway system because he passed away
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: before one was Bill that he died of pneumonia in
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: January one. What a kick in the pants to die
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: on the first day of the year. I don't know,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: maybe it's like I just got over the finish line.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Let's be positive about that. We try to stay positive
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: here on ridiculous history. UM. But yeah, one thing that
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: that that that pretty much gets us to the present
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: more or less, because like you said, we do have
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: UM still proposed uh Elon Musk space XV train technology
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: UM being used to create an airless UH too where
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: there's no resistance so that this UM hyper loop train
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: can move very very quickly. What was what's the proposed
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: top speed of the of the hyper loop ben Well,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: according to Elon Musk, it would have a top speed
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: of seven hundred and sixty miles per hour or one thousand,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: two d twenty kilometers an hour. That's if everything works,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: you know, right. And the thing about it is, I
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: think that whole project largely remains in the conceptual realm
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken. I don't know if any actual
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: construction is taking place, because again it's a massive infrastructure
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: undertaking that you do have to get the buy in
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: of of those uh, those those municipalities that are along
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: that route, which would be I five and currently, in
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: addition to a few isolated test case with human beings,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: we do know other living creatures have taken a trip
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: through underground tubes, probably not consensually, not just that black
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: cat in the third tube from earlier, but also dogs, mice, roosters, monkeys,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: guinea pigs and uh one time fish. And I think
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: we do actually have a little bit of a background
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: on that black cat um that was done on October seven,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: eight UM at the General Post Office in New York UM.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: And this was meant to be an opening ceremony where
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: they were going to demonstrate all of those various items
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: that we discussed, and that day they actually did transport
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: the cat um and uh he described as being pulled
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: quote dazed and probably not terribly enthused about human technological
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: innovation out of that tube. And that is from an
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: article on the Atlantic dot com entitled that time people
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: sent a cat through the mail. And here our story ends,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: but research continues, and here's hoping that one day we
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: can all ride the hyper loop together, uh to the horizon.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: With the hyper loop, I say, forward technology, forward to
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: the future. Let's whoop into a brave new world of transport. Uh.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Question for everybody listening, as always, thank you for tuning in.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Would you ride a pneumatic tube subway? I'm all about it.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Something feels retrofuturistic about it. You know, it's like you're
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: you're a character in the Jetsons or something. And for
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: some reason, I keep thinking that Jetsons had pneumatic tubes,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: but maybe maybe no, they did. They did, they were
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: transported just floating through them. Yeah, right, isn't that right
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: case you remember in the Jetsons, isn't there wasn't there
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: like networks of pneumatic tubes where they were kind of
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: just you know, literally sucked through. Yeah. I think it's
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: it's sort of that retrofuturistic thing, that's right, because yeah,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: it's the kind of stuff you would you would see
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: in Jules Verne uh novels or whatever, the idea of
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: that steampunk vision of the future. And that's why we
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: still kind of associate that quality with pneumatic tubes, even
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: though they're largely a bit antiquated. But you know, Elon
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Musk is trying to bring them back, and god speed
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: to them. I think that hyperloop idea seems interesting, but
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: I do believe there's some controversy behind it and people
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: aren't quite sure if it will work exactly the way
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: he thinks. Bring back the tube, That's what I say.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: Forward to the future with the tube. Let's put it
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: on a T shirt. Maybe I'm just saying that because
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: I'm the coffee mug I'm drinking out of today is
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: actually a ridiculous history coffee MiG. You can get one
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: for yourself at t public dot com slash Ridiculous History.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: You can get mugs and and other other stuff that
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: you print logos on shirt shirts. Of course that's te
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Public bread and butter. But they also do mouse pads.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: People still use mouse pads? Do we do? They do
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: capes that would be the might be might be able
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: to send them an item and have them custom printed.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Who knows, But you can check that stuff out and
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: we get like a tiny fraction of of the of
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: the proceeds there we get a little less fired so
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: so thanks so much as always to our superproducer Casey Pegram,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Thanks Alex Williams who composed our theme research associate Gabe Loser,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Christopher Hacio. It's always here and spirit looking forward to
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: hanging out with him. And you been in in Los
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: Angeles next week and we're doing some business travel and
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: we'll probably have Alex there as well. Thanks to Eve's
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Jeff Coach, check out her show This Day in History
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: Class as well as solutions sessions. You will also remember Eves,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: of course, from an earlier episode of our show concerning
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Uncle Tom's cabin. We want to hear your opinions about
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: weird transport. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: We are on Facebook with a community page called Ridiculous Historians.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Do check it out. It's a barrel of laughs. It's
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: a bag of hilarious badgers, it really is. And and
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: our badgers ever anything but hilarious. Yes, I think they are.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: They can be quite vicious, yes, this is. This is
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: the kinder, gentler version of the badger. You can find
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: us as individual human people on social media as well.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: I am exclusively on Instagram at how Now Noel Brown,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: and you can find me on Instagram at ben Bolan
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: or you can find me on Twitter where I'm at
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: ben Bowland h s W. I will say, you know,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: I've got some adventures coming up, so tune in and
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: find me on the social meds. Uh no, I am
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: looking forward to hitting the road until the tube system
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: is built. You know it, but here's the riding in
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: the tube one day. I look forward to it. Back
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: see you next time. Books. For more podcasts from my
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.