The golden era of the pneumatic tube — when it carried fast food, people, and cats

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You can still see pneumatic tubes at bank drive-thrus and a few other places, but their scope used to be a lot more ambitious than carrying deposit slips. For decades, these tubes — which use compressed air or a vacuum to move all sorts of capsules — carried weird and wonderful things. And, in a way, the things they carried tell the story of the tubes themselves, which went from fantastic innovation to mostly antiquated oddity. The tube began by moving people

From the beginning, people imagined that pneumatic tubes might carry people. As early as 1812, one writer proposed sending people on a train driven by "the power and velocity of air." These attempts were primarily proofs of concept or sideshow attractions, but they were often audacious. For example, Alfred Ely Beach built a block-long pneumatic transit system in New York City. The demonstration actually sold 400,000 rides during its first year of operation.



He hoped for wider adoption, but the system was shut down in 1873. Moving people was impractical over long distances. Packages, however, made more sense. The mail used pneumatic tubes to carry everything from goldfish to cats

The New York Post Office was one of many to adopt the pneumatic tube for limited use, as did other cities in the US and Europe. The North Philadelphia system showed off its system by sending a cat and an aquarium through it, as well as eggs, china, and hot tea. A rabbit hopped in a tube as well. Once, even a sick cat was sent through the tubes to a veterinarian (when he emerged, he jumped out of the canister and ran away as fast as possible). But as truck delivery improved, the tubes began to be seen as impractical (as early as 1914, one contractor called to "kill the tubes"). Though tube adoption by the USPS had plateaued, their popularity paved the way for use in individual buildings. Pneumatic tubes enter the glorious world of inter-office mail