Postal services and pneumatic tubes
(Update: if you're interested in pneumatic tubes, I've written more here.)
My big project -- possibly undergirding my dissertation in a year: Postal services and pneumatic tube systems in the late 19th and early 20th century, especially in Paris. I'm reading these services in terms of their urban interfaces, their material qualities and the interest in the 1870s-1890s of physical networks across cities. Paris is interesting because of an explosion of postal and telegraph products and services, the response to the siege of the city (Balloon Post!), and the shift from electric to material form to someone's doorstep in terms of message delivery. The Hôtel des Postes fascinates because of its ingenious interfaces within the building and its processing capability; the pneumatic tubes are fascinating because they make manifest the force of air and use it to literally propel information across a building or a city.
I must admit, I'm surprised to find myself heading toward a 19th century dissertation topic, and at that, one that deals with France. But working on tubes and postal services lets me explore the things that I love about tangible networks and interfaces. They make me realize just how much we have to learn from these old and often forgotten modes of transmission.
My big project -- possibly undergirding my dissertation in a year: Postal services and pneumatic tube systems in the late 19th and early 20th century, especially in Paris. I'm reading these services in terms of their urban interfaces, their material qualities and the interest in the 1870s-1890s of physical networks across cities. Paris is interesting because of an explosion of postal and telegraph products and services, the response to the siege of the city (Balloon Post!), and the shift from electric to material form to someone's doorstep in terms of message delivery. The Hôtel des Postes fascinates because of its ingenious interfaces within the building and its processing capability; the pneumatic tubes are fascinating because they make manifest the force of air and use it to literally propel information across a building or a city.
During the same four-year period when the word "interface" was first used, in which the notion of networks proliferated, Julien Guadet (1834-1908) designed the Hôtel des Postes (1880- 1884) in Paris, the central office for the French postal network. An enormous civic architectural undertaking, the Hôtel des Postes sorted, moved, marked, placed in sacks, audited, loaded and transported letters, periodicals and packets at high speeds, before sending them out again to their destinations. For Guadet and bureaucratic chronicler of Paris Maxime Du Camp, La Poste represented a living system that they described in anthropomorphic terms. Guadet described the postal system as epileptically fast; du Camp compared it to a heart that "draws in its correspondence and forces it back out to distribute in every direction." Beyond these biological comparisons, however, Guadet designed the Hôtel des Postes to operate as an ordinateur--a computer processor--atop the postal network. The Hôtel des Postes represents a nascent, modern approach to designing buildings, one that translated organizational, functional requirements into form.Fueling communication through pipes that ran under cities at speeds of up to 50 km per hour, the pneumatic post served as an urban subterranean communication network from the 1850s into the early 21st century, first in Europe, then the United States, and by the early 20th century, South America and Australia. Depending on the city, pneumatic tubes shuttled telegrams or letters and packages, both commercial and personal, as an antidote to increasing urban congestion and traffic on the streets above. Messages delivered by pneumatic dispatch surfaced in post offices and train stations, where messengers carried them by bicycle (or later, motorcycle or truck) from the post or telegraph branch to their final destinations. For commercial buildings, pneumatic tubes offered ready communication systems between and within any enterprises that required the movement of receipts and paper. At once buried and tangled, emerging into the interiors of buildings and offering varied interfaces for its users, the pneumatic tube presents an enigmatic image of modernity--the merger of construction and communication.
Pneumatic networks preceded electrification, first powered by steam and only by electricity in the early 20th century. They enjoyed a long lifespan. Implemented first in London in 1853 as an information conduit between the London Stock Exchange and the Central Post Office, the technology quickly transferred to other cities. Berlin began its Rohrpost in 1865; Paris built its first pneumatic networks in 1866 and began public Poste Pneumatique in 1879; Philadelphia followed suit for first class post in 1893 and New York in 1897. Urban tube networks existed for a surprisingly long time, remaining in operation until 1953 in New York, 1984 in Paris and 2002 in Prague (where it was only taken out of service by a flood that destroyed much of the tube infrastructure).
I must admit, I'm surprised to find myself heading toward a 19th century dissertation topic, and at that, one that deals with France. But working on tubes and postal services lets me explore the things that I love about tangible networks and interfaces. They make me realize just how much we have to learn from these old and often forgotten modes of transmission.
Well, just think of the money you could make if you turn this into a book aimed at the steampunks... ;-)
Seriously, sounds fascinating and looking forward to reading more...
Molly, @billder just directed me to your work. I have been looking for information about pneumatic tube systems in Paris for a short while to no avail. Am absolutely thrilled you are investing time in the topic and look forward to your research.
Toronto department store Eatons, used the tubes up to the late 1970's-early '80's for their cash transactions.
THey were also included in infrastructure until pretty recently. There is a newish (1970s) major library at the University of Toronto which included them as part of its infrastructure. When I was there in the 1980s they were, if not still in use, clearly only recently discontinued.
Have you seen the February 1937 issue of National Geographic? In it is an article on Berlin, Germany (absent any mentions of anti-Semitism, oddly enough). It's a fantastic story. Berlin at that time had a pneumatic tube system that could send mail anywhere in the city in a matter of minutes. Berlin also had post offices with telephones with TV screens and theaters with giant tv screens. It's still a marvel to read; back in 1937 it must have seemed like science fiction.
And of course, pneumatic tubes are still in use in many hospitals, prisons, customs facilities, and a few other places where large numbers of original documents or small objects need to be shuttled around.
I echo Moleitau's idea, and I wish you great luck. I hope you will post your
disseration here when you complete it, I can't wait to read it! Perhaps you might work in how the pipe systems themselves were designed in detail, so that someone with historical interest in the subject like me could recreate it for our old homes? Exciting stuff!
I thought you might be interested to know that an official pneumatic service is still used in France between the two chambers of parliament (Sénat and Assemblée Nationale). As far as I know, it's the last one still active in the country.
Interesting work. I've got no citation but I recall a story (on NPR's ATC?) pre-9/11 about how NYC's old pneumatic system. At that time it still functioned between Wall Street firms and elsewhere in Manhattan. In fact, they reported that it was faster than faxes and some other more modern technologies (but internet?) that relied on the notoriously convoluted telephone connections there.
Molly, Not too long ago I was talking to an old mentor and friend from China and he told me about the system of paper-moving and payment that a now defunct, communist-era Beijing department store once used to process sales.
As it worked in big stores in China at the time: To purchase something you'd present the good to a clerk and get a ticket. You would then bring the ticket to a clerk at another window and get that ticket stamped, bring that ticket back to the initial clerk and collect the product and another ticket, then bring the new ticket to another window to receive your receipt and tax stamp.
This particular Beijing store used a dense net of steel wires just above head height to clip tickets/money/receipts to weighted hooks that could roll freely. The wires would connect every clerk to every other clerk. These clerks would send papers shooting across the room along these wires from station to station in order to save the shopper from having to battle their way through a busy store.
My friend recalls watching in wonder as these tickets zipped by, birdlike, just overhead.
I did a quick search for any confirmation of this, but nothing jumps out right away.
Peter.
...by the way, Molly, I think we're old acquaintances from Hamline in St. Paul.
First Tech Credit Union on Seattle's eastside still uses pneumatic tubes. Ironically, it's to facilitate their futuristic video teller system. Customers walk up to a two-way video system, talk to a teller upstairs and send paperwork back and forth through tubes.
Try the American Philatelic Society Library in Bellefonte, PA or the Royal Philatelic Society in London, England. http://www.compulink.co.uk/~mhayhurst/jdhayhurst/pneumatic/book1.html
this is a link to an on line series of articles
BEST stores out here in Southern California in the 80's used to use these systems. As a child, I was always fascinated with it. "Where are those tubes going?" I imagined some huge infinite underground labyrinth of tubes just speeding around and delivering to whomever ...wherever.
I really wish we still had these.
Just a pop culture note- There was an episode of Futurama called "Beaurocrat's Joy" that made a network of pneumatic tubes a central element in the story, and even had a musical number.
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=156361&title=bureaucrats-song
Tube systems are still in use within several commercial and industrial locations. But the costliest and most sophisticated tube systems I've seen are used in hospitals. They transport bio samples and other related material. Many of them are switched systems, that is they have computer controlled brancching tubes which can direct capsules towards several possible tubes and destinations from a single incoming tube. In the ancient tube systems of Paris, New York and Prague this was done entirely by hand by human sorters, at different way stations.
Was just at a Costco few months ago, and they transported the cash for a large refund to their customer service desk via pneumatic tube.
I remember thinking it was a right clever way of doing it securely!
A follow up to my comments The American Philatelic Society magazine of March, 2006 had an article on the Pneumatic Posts of Vienna and listed 5 articles in philatelic magazines on the subject.
I have an image of the pneumatic system in use at the Sears, Roebuck & Company world headquarters in Chicago circa 1910. It is a stereoscope slide. I have scanned both the front and the explanatory paragraph on the back. It claims fifteen miles of tubing, and that more than 70,000 carriers were handled in one day.
I would be glad to send them to you if they would be of use.
DTK
dtkindler@gmail.com
Molly, are these useful?
www.columbia.edu/~brennan/beach/
http://www.buispost.eu/d/index.php?page=stadt-rohrpost
http://einestages.spiegel.de/static/topicalbumbackground/2302/mit_hochdruck_durch_den_untergrund.html
Regards,
K.
i was recently surprised when a ticket counter clerk at the DTW midfield terminal stuffed my cash payment into a pneumatic tube.
the midfield terminal opened in 2002.
Please consider Monograph Number 2, http://www.imagenet.org/
I believe that J&R Music in Manhattan was (and still might be) using a pneumatic tube system for paperwork within their store. I know they were still using it up until several years ago.
I really wish we still had these.
thanks