Moving objects from one place to another via pneumatic tube was first proposed as far back as 1812. The London Pneumatic Despatch Company was founded in 1859, and operated an underground railway system in London from 1863 until 1874. Capsules weighing up to 3 tons rode on 2 foot narrow gauge rail inside the tube. A 30-horsepower steam engine hooked to a 21-foot Waddle fan pumped air into (or out of) the tube, and the capsule – surrounded by a rubber seal – was pushed along by the air pressure differential. One capsule could carry up to 35 bags of mail between the North West District Post Office and the Euston railway station one-third of a mile away in under 60 seconds.
In New York, Alfred Ely Beach built the first subway in the city’s history. Inspired by the crush of traffic on Broadway in the late 1860s, Beach dug the tunnel in secret to avoid the corruption of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall (among his many other corrupt dealings, Tweed controlled a monopoly on the city’s streetcars) but managed to do so across the street from City Hall. However, it was little more than a proof of concept. The tunnel ran for 300 feet, but there was only a single station. Passengers would ride the car to the end of the tunnel, then get pulled back to their starting point. Even so, it attracted 400,000 riders in its first year.
But Beach was unable to gather the political support necessary to extend the system to Central Park. Property owners along Broadway feared that the tunneling would damage their buildings, and (ironically) Boss Tweed helped kill public funding of expanding the subway system by sponsoring a bill to do so in the state legislature. While all this was going on, a different group of investors started a system of elevated railways in Manhattan. Elevated trains were soon seen a practical by the public – and underground rail seen as impractical – and this attitude held sway in New York for the remainder of the 19th Century.
Use of pneumatic tubes would take off on a smaller scale: for distributing messages and mail quickly within a building (as shown in the header photo.) This usage would eventually get replaced by email and other electronics. But pneumatic tubes continue to be used to this day, both at banks which feature drive-thru lanes, and at hospitals for transporting blood and tissue samples to the lab in mere seconds.
