Pneumatic tube

Pneumatic tubes (or capsule pipelines, also known as pneumatic tube transport or PTT) are systems that propel cylindrical containers through networks of tubes by compressed air or by partial vacuum. They are used for transporting solid objects, as opposed to conventional pipelines, which transport fluids. Pneumatic tube networks gained acceptance in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for offices that needed to transport small, urgent packages (such as mail, paperwork, or money) over relatively short distances (within a building or, at most, within a city). Some installations grew to significant complexity, but were mostly superseded. In some settings, such as hospitals, they remain widespread and have been further extended and developed in the 21st century.
A small number of pneumatic transportation systems were also built for larger cargo, to compete with more standard train and subway systems. However, these never gained popularity.
History.
Historical use.
Pneumatic transportation was invented by William Murdoch around 1799. The Victorians were the first to use "capsule pipelines" to transmit telegrams, to nearby buildings from telegraph stations. The system is known as pneumatic dispatch.
In 1854 Josiah Latimer Clark was issued a patent "for conveying letters or parcels between places by the pressure of air and vacuum." In 1853 he installed a pneumatic system between the London Stock Exchange in Threadneedle Street, London, and the offices of the Electric Telegraph Company in Lothbury. The Electric Telegraph Company used the system to acquire stock prices and other financial information to pass to subscribers of their service over their telegraph wires. The advantage of the pneumatic system was that without it the company would have had to employ runners to carry messages between the two buildings, or else employ trained telegraph operators within the Stock Exchange. In the mid-1860s, the company installed similar systems to local stock exchanges in Liverpool, Birmingham, and Manchester. After the telegraphs were nationalised in Britain, the pneumatic system continued to be expanded under Post Office Telegraphs. This expansion was due to the invention in 1870 by Joseph William Willmot (previously employed at the Electric & International Telegraph Company) of improving Latimer-Clark's invention with the 'double sluice pneumatic valve' and in 1880 the 'intermediate signaller/quick break switch for pneumatic tubes' which dramatically speeded up the process which made it possible for multiple carrier messages in the tube at any one time. By 1880 there were over 21 miles of tube in London. A tube was laid between the Aberdeen fish market office and the head post office to facilitate the rapid sale of a very perishable commodity.
While they are commonly used for small parcels and documents–including as cash carriers at banks or supermarkets–they were originally proposed in the early 19th century for transport of heavy freight. It was once envisaged that networks of these massive tubes might be used to transport people.
Current use.
The technology is still used on a smaller scale. While its use for communicating information has been superseded, pneumatic tubes are widely used for transporting small objects, where convenience and speed in a local environment are important.
In the United States, drive-up banks often use pneumatic tubes to transport cash and documents between cars and tellers. Many hospitals have a computer-controlled pneumatic tube system to deliver drugs, documents and specimens to and from laboratories and nurses' stations. Many factories use them to deliver parts quickly across large campuses. Many larger stores use systems to securely transport excess cash from checkout stands to back offices, and to send change back to cashiers. They are used in casinos and love hotels. NASA's original Mission Control Center had pneumatic tubes connecting controller consoles with staff support rooms.
Pneumatic tube systems are used in science, to transport samples during neutron activation analysis. Samples must be moved from the nuclear reactor core, in which they are bombarded with neutrons, to the instrument that records the resulting radiation. As some of the radioactive isotopes in the sample can have very short half-lives, speed is important. These systems may be automated, with a magazine of sample tubes that are moved into the reactor core in turn for a predetermined time, before being moved to the instrument station and finally to a container for storage and disposal.
Until it closed in early 2011, a McDonald's in Edina, Minnesota claimed to be the "World's Only Pneumatic Air Drive-Thru," sending food from their strip-mall location to a drive-through in the middle of a parking lot.
Technology editor Quentin Hardy notes that renewed interest in transmission of data by pneumatic tube accompanies discussions of digital network security, and he cites research into London's forgotten pneumatic network.
Related applications include fish cannons which use mechanisms very similar to pneumatic tube systems.
Applications.
In postal service.
Pneumatic post or pneumatic mail is a system to deliver letters through pressurized air tubes. It was invented by the Scottish engineer William Murdoch in the 19th century and was later developed by the London Pneumatic Despatch Company. Pneumatic post systems were used in several large cities starting in the second half of the 19th century (including an 1866 London system powerful and large enough to transport humans during trial runs – though not intended for that purpose), but later were largely abandoned.
A major network of tubes in Paris (the Paris pneumatic post) was in use until 1984, when it was abandoned in favor of computers and fax machines. The Prague pneumatic post commenced for the public in 1889 in Prague, now in the Czech Republic, and the network extended approximately .
Pneumatic post stations usually connect post offices, stock exchanges, banks and ministries. Italy was the only country to issue postage stamps (between 1913 and 1966) specifically for pneumatic post. Austria, France, and Germany issued postal stationery for pneumatic use.
Typical applications are in banks, hospitals and supermarkets. Many large retailers used pneumatic tubes to transport cheques or other documents from cashiers to the accounting office.
In public transportation.
In 1812, George Medhurst first proposed, but never implemented, blowing passenger carriages through a tunnel. Precursors of pneumatic tube systems for passenger transport, the atmospheric railway (for which the tube was laid between the rails, with a piston running in it suspended from the train through a sealable slot in the top of the tube) were operated as follows:
In 1861, the "London Pneumatic Despatch Company" built a system large enough to move a person, although it was intended for parcels. The inauguration of the new Holborn Station on 10 October 1865 was marked by having the Duke of Buckingham, the chairman, and some company directors blown through the tube to Euston (a five-minute trip).
The Crystal Palace pneumatic railway was exhibited at the Crystal Palace in 1864. This was a prototype for a proposed "Waterloo and Whitehall Railway" that would have run under the River Thames linking Waterloo and Charing Cross. Digging commenced in 1865 but was halted in 1868 due to financial problems.
In 1867 at the American Institute Fair in New York, Alfred Ely Beach demonstrated a long, diameter pipe that was capable of moving 12 passengers plus a conductor. One year after New York City's first-ever elevated rail line went into service; in 1869, the Beach Pneumatic Transit Company of New York secretly constructed a long, diameter pneumatic subway line under Broadway, to demonstrate the possibilities of the new transport mode. The line only operated for a few months, closing after Beach was unsuccessful in getting permission to extend it – Boss Tweed, a corrupt influential politician, did not want it to go ahead as he was intending to personally invest into competing schemes for an elevated rail line.
In the 1920s, the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railways cooperated together to lay an elaborate system of 4,500 metre pneumatic tubing between four of their offices to Postal Station A at Union Station in Toronto, Canada. There was also a connection to the mail room at the Royal York Hotel. The newspapers the Star and Telegram joined into the system, laying pipes.
In the 1960s, Lockheed and MIT with the United States Department of Commerce conducted feasibility studies on a vactrain system powered by ambient atmospheric pressure and "gravitational pendulum assist" to connect cities on the country's East Coast. They calculated that the run between Philadelphia and New York City would average 174 meters per second, that is 626 km/h (388 mph). When those plans were abandoned as too expensive, Lockheed engineer L.K. Edwards founded Tube Transit, Inc. to develop technology based on "gravity-vacuum transportation". In 1967 he proposed a "Bay Area Gravity-Vacuum Transit" for California that would run alongside the then-under construction BART system. It was never built.
Research into trains running in partially evacuated tubes, such as the Vactrain and Hyperloop, is continuing.
In money transfer.
In large retail stores, pneumatic tube systems were used to transport sales slips and money from the salesperson to a centralized tube room, where cashiers could make change, reference credit records, and so on.
Many banks with drive-throughs also use pneumatic tubes.
In medicine.
Many hospitals have pneumatic tube systems which send samples to laboratories. Blood preservations are transported, where weight and transport duration matter as well as preventing haemolysis caused by centrifugal and accelerating forces. Pneumatic tube systems are also used in hospitals to transport X-rays, patient documents, general documents, drugs and test results.
 pneumatic tube systems have been shown to handle heavy liter-capacity IV bags with significantly fewer jams compared to the systems.
Department stores.
To manage its mail order business the department store Sears built "massive warehouses, like its central facility in Chicago, in which messages to various departments and assembly workers were sent through pneumatic tubes". Many other department stores had pneumatic tube systems in the 20th century, such as Jacksons of Reading and Myer in Melbourne, Australia.
Waste disposal.
The use of pneumatic tubes in waste disposal units include the Hajj mosque, Mecca, GlashusEtt in the Hammarby Sjöstad area of Stockholm, Sweden, Old Montreal, Canada, Disneyworld, Florida and Roosevelt Island and Hudson Yards, New York (US).
In production.
Pneumatic tube systems are used in production plants. Uses include conveying spare parts, measuring instruments, tools or work pieces alongside conveyor belts or in the production process. In industrial laboratories samples are transported through the pneumatic tube systems. These can be conveyed in any physical state (solid, liquid, gas) and at any temperature. For example, the industrial company ThyssenKrupp sends steel samples through pneumatic tubes at a rate of per second from the furnace to the laboratory.
Technical characteristics.
Modern systems (for smaller, i.e. “normal”, tube diameters as used in the transport of small capsules) reach speeds of around per second, though some historical systems already achieved speeds of per second. At the same time, varying air pressures allow capsules to brake slowly, removing the jarring arrival that used to characterise earlier systems and make them unsuitable for fragile contents.
Very powerful systems can transport items with a weight of up to and a diameter of up to . More than 100 lines and 1000 stations can be connected.
Further, modern systems can be computer-controlled for tracking of any specific capsule and managing priority deliveries as well as system efficiency. With this technology, time-critical items can be transported, such as tissue samples taken during a surgery in a hospital. RFID chips within in the capsules gather data – e. g. about the location of the carrier, its transport speed or its destination. The systems collect and save these data to help users optimize their internal processes and turnaround times. The facilities can be linked to the company's software systems, e.g. laboratory information systems, for full integration into company logistical management and production chains.