31 Jul 2001 Tue 1330

So there I sat in the Cafe Cosy revelling in my fries, and watching the gas company dig up the street. Suddenly I was struck with a brilliant inspiration. What we need in Buckingham is a pneumatic distribution network, and now is the perfect time to install one, while the gas company has the streets dug up anyhow. Pneumatics was a big item in Paris and London in the 1880s.

It's just a network of tubes of various sizes with a controlled vacuum but it carried mail quickly and efficiently and was the equal of the fax any day. You wrote your message and put it in a little round cylinder about the size of a flashlight. You lifted the gate valve on the pneumatic tube, slipped in the message cylinder and "S-S-L-U-RRR-P-P", it was gone, and it would drop on the addressee's desk a minute or two later. It was a fabulous system.

Just imagine if we had such a system in Buckingham; I could go to B.J.s and order french fries, a call would be made, a package would be prepared at Cafe Cosy and "S-S-L-U-R-R-P", into the pneumatic tube it would go. A minute later it would arrive at my table at B.J.s, the ultimate in texture, taste, colour and warmth.

1854 - [T] The first pneumatic mail tube (1.5 inch diameter, 220 yards long) installed underground by Josiah Latimer Clark between London Stock Exchange and Central Telegraph Office. A steam engine is used. Cyllindrical message carriers move with the speed of 20 feet/sec. The tube is used in place of the most busy short-range telegraph lines (Standage 1998:90-91).

1858 - [M] The second pneumatic mail tube (2.4 inch diameter, nearly 1 mile long) installed in London (Standage 1998:91).

1865 - [M] Pneumatic tube networks built in Berlin, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester (Standage 1998:92).

1866 - [M] Pneumatic tube networks built in Dublin, Marseilles, Milan, Munich, Naples, New York, Prague, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, and Vienna (Standage 1998:92).

1870 - [M] The 3 inch pneumatic mail tube becomes a norm. It can move up to 60 messages at a time. One such tube is an equivalent of 7 telegraph wires and 14 operators working flat out ((Standage 1998:93).

1875 - [M] The Central Telegraph Office in London houses 450 telegraph instruments on three floors, linked by 68 internal pneumatic tubes (Standage 1998:94).

1879 - [O] Fixed price, regardless the length of the document, for pneumatic-tube messages introduced on Paris network. Messages are written on special forms which could be purchased, prepaid, in advance. Messages are deposited in one of the many hundreds of dedicated

mailboxes (in post-offices, on streets and backs of trams), collected by the postman, sent by tube across the city, and delivered by a messanger to an addressee (Standage 1998:95).

Copyright 1974. The France & Colonies Philatelic Society

of Great Britain.

Introduction

"The first half of the 19th century saw an unprecedented acceleration of communication through the introduction of the electric telegraph. Its principal application was to commercial intelligence for the merchants on the stock exchanges for whom fortunes could be won by the receipt of advance information, but the gain in speed from the telegraph could be lost if a message took a long time to get from the telegraph office to the stock exchange.

"It was to avoid this delay that in 1853 J. Latimer Clark installed a 220 yard long pneumatic tube connecting the London Stock Exchange in Threadneedle Street with the Central Station in Lothbury of the Electric Telegraph Company which had been incorporated in 1846. There were similar installations in Berlin in 1865 between the Central Telegraph Office and the Stock Exchange, and in 1866 in Paris out of the place de la Bourse.

"Other cities followed and tube systems were opened not only for the transport of telegrams but also for individual letters and for letters in bulk. The transport of letters in bulk required large diameter tubes such as exist today in Hamburg and as once existed in a number of American cities. Provision for the transport of individual letters was made in Vienna and Prague, Berlin,

Munich, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Naples, Milan, Paris and Marseilles. There were ephemeral installations for private letters at the South Kensington Exhibition of 1890, at the Karlsbad Philatelic Exhibition of 1910, and at the Turin International Exhibition of 1911."

Mark Hayhurst (Mark.Hayhurst@unilever.com)

Edited by C.S. Holder

Prepared in digital format by Mark Hayhurst

Copyright1974. The France & Colonies Philatelic Society of

Great Britain.

"Today, the pneumatic post survives only in Paris and Italy. Pneumatic tubes are still however widely used for the transport inside many cities of the world of small batches of telegrams, express letters and air mail letters. These tubes are generally of a diameter of about

3 inches and the messages are carried in cylinders which are propelled along the tube by an air pressure differential from the back to the front, attaining speeds of around 25 mph.

"Letters and cards which have been transported in the tubes are invariably creased where they have been rolled up for insertion in a cylinder.

"For generations the pneumatic letter-card was known affectionately as the petit bleu since, between 1897 and 1902, it was on blue paper and it was under this name that a 'Telegramme' was a vital piece of evidence in the enquiries which led to the eventual acquittal of Dreyfus.

At a court-martial in December 1894 he had been found guilty of passing military secrets to the Germans and was transported to Cayenne. In 1896 the contents of a waste paper basket in the office of Schwartzkoppen, the German military attache in Paris, were taken to the French Intelligence Staff and found to include a torn-up pneu which had never been sent.

"When pieced together, it was found that the petit bleu contained a message to another French officer, Esterhazy, implicating him in the offences attributed to Dreyfus. Thus started the chain of events which culminated in 1906 with the ceremonial restoration of his commission to Dreyfus in that courtyard of the Ecole Militaire lying just behind the Pavillon de l'Artillerie which had housed the telegraph office Ecole Militaire until its closure in 1891.

"The standard work in France on the pneumatic post is 'Cent ans de tubes pneumatiques' J Boblique, Echo de la Timbrologie, 1966.

Last Updated: 2000-05-05

But is this just a quaint, Jules Verne-esque whimsy? Is there any practical reason to create this dream of the past? The real question is: can we afford a future without it? The current transportation paradigm, based on polluting and non-renewable fossil fuels and leading to frustrating and costly waits in traffic, can't last our society much longer. Alternatives that have been suggested have been based on un-proven technologies, would offer only insignificant improvements, or would force society to adopt new lifestyles that it is unwilling to (such as being crammed into close quarters with strangers or having to travel on a fixed schedule). A pneumatic tube network with individual pods solves our environmental and economic transportation-related problems while conforming to the desires of consumers for solitude and freedom.

Imagine a city uncluttered with paved roads, where vegetation grows between the buildings, cooling and taming the urban environment. Parkways and parking lots become just parks. Imagine animals never having to risk their lives crossing a busy freeway or interstate, the sight of road kill as unexpected as the sight of horse manure is today. Imagine goods being delivered to businesses quickly and efficiently—even automatically when needed. Imagine never having to deal with traffic, or getting lost, or refueling your vehicle, or wasting time driving when you could be putting the finishing touches on your report that is due. Imagine every home with a tube-port instead of a garage, every apartment building with a tube-shaft instead of an elevator, allowing people to get into a pod in their home and travel to anywhere that is hooked into the tube network. Imagine the entire world networked together with pneumatic tubing.

Edited by C.S. Holder

Prepared in digital format by Mark Hayhurst

Copyright © 1974. The France & Colonies Philatelic Society of Great Britain.

Part 2 of 3

Part 3 of 3

Part 1

Pneumatic dispatch is a special method of transporting letters, postcards, telegrams, small parcels and goods through tubes from one station to another, using pressurised air to do so. There are different types of pneumatic dispatch systems. Internal networks are used within pharmacies, banks, factories, hospitals, post offices, mail order offices, insurance companies, warehouses and newspaper offices. Long-distance networks connect buildings which are some distance apart from one another.

The pneumatic dispatch system was a product of the industrial revolution, a key technology of its time and an all-European and transatlantic phenomena. The most important urban centres in Europe and overseas were connected to one another and exchanged their experiences with the system. So, for example, Berlin's system was built by engineers from Vienna and Paris while the German Siemens company went to London to demonstrate its own system there - not without success.

American postal officials regularly went to Europe in order to study the pneumatic dispatch networks there and apply the experiences to their own country. The pneumatic dispatch system had its heydays between 1860 and 1945. In those years, it recorded the highest number of dispatches. Thereafter, it went into decline because of new technologies which replaced it and was subsequently forgotten about.

The English and French terms "pneumatic tube" and "la tube pneumatique" literally spell out what the "Rohrpost", as the system is called in German, actually is: "Pneumatic tubes are used to transport letters, small parcels, telegrams and so on across a certain distance by means of pressurized air." Berlin's system was initially called "pneumatische Depeschenbeförderung". The Royal Prussian Telegraphs Direction watched the introduction of London's first pneumatic dispatch system in 1861 with great interest and commissioned the Siemens & Halske company to build such a network for Berlin. The first line between the main telegraphs office and the stock exchange entered service in 1865, a second one following in 1868. This original system still suffered from teething troubles, such as the problems occuring during extreme changes ofclimate. The system was consequently reorganised after 1870 and made available to the public in 1876. At this point, it also got its name "Rohrpost" which was coined by the General Post Director Heinrich von Stephan and quickly spread in all German-speaking countries. The rise of Berlin's pneumatic dispatch system was unstoppable. Starting with 15 offices and 4 machine houses, it had extended to 90 offices, 400 kilometres of tubes and 12 high speed lines by 1939, delivering some 8 million dispatches per year. It was thus the biggest system of its kind in Germany and the world's second largest after Paris. But the Second World War and the cold war had a devastating impact on it. By 1945, a large proportion of the tubes, located directly under the pavement, had been destroyed by bombing. And just when the most basic repairs had been carried out, the city's division began, also affecting the underground networks in its wake. In 1949, the Russian sector cut its pneumatic dispatch connections to the western sector. The two parts were never to be linked again.

While East Berlin's system shrank to some 65 kilometres, new stretches were actually built in West Berlin, where the system had 167 kilometres of tubes. New communication techniques such as telefax, however, clearly indicated that that the demise of the system was only a question of time. West Berlin's public system terminated its operations in 1963. Some deliveries were still carried out in the following years but in early 1972 the whole network was shut down. East Berlin continued its regular pneumatic dispatch until about 1976, with some internal administrative deliveries continuing into the 1980s.

Nowadays, Berlin's pneumatic dispatch system is history. But the technology as such is still in operation. Several countries in Germany and other countries continue to install such systems.

Pneumatic dispatch will continue to play a role, even if just for internal deliveries. In the age of e-mail and faxes it is still necessary, after all, to transport original documents quickly from one location to another. The history of this fascinating means of transport teaches us that human inventiveness and phantasy transcend the boundaries of time. The fathers of the pneumatic dispatch system have played their part in making this world what it is today.

Ingmar Arnold [Please take a look at the book "Luft-Züge - Die Geschichte der Rohrpost in Berlin und anderswo" (Air Trains - The history of pneumatic dispatch systems in Berlin and elsewhere) by Ingmar Arnold in our book suggestion section! ]