New York to Beijing in two hours without leaving the ground?

Brian Dodson
March 22, 2012
5 PICTURES

An ETT (Evacuated Tube Transport) line in which car-sized passenger/cargo capsules would travel
Image Gallery (5 images)

Although there are similarities to the Startram concept we looked at recently, this take on maglev-like transport is all on terra firma and, if it ever eventuates, would take passengers from New York to Beijing in just two hours. Advocates of Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT) claim it is silent, cheaper than planes, trains or cars and faster than jets.

The basic plan is, well, as old as the enabling patent, US Patent 5950543, whose description is quite thorough. Issued in 1999, there remain seven years on the term of the patent, which is assigned to ET3.com, Inc., a licensing organization that hopes to head an alliance of players to fund and construct demonstration facilities.
The short version of the ETT story is as follows: put a superconducting maglev train in evacuated tubes, then accelerate using linear electric motors until the design velocity is attained. As the motors are integrated into the evacuated tubes, the conveyance capsules which travel in the tube need have no moving or electrically activated parts - passive superconductors allow the capsules to float in the tube, while eddy currents induced in conducting materials drive the capsules. Efficiency of such a system would be high, as the electric energy required to accelerate a capsule could largely be recaptured as it slows.

The most practical model system is based on car-sized passenger/cargo capsules that travel in 1.5 m (5 ft) diameter vacuum maglev tubes. The maglev tubes are permanently maintained at near vacuum conditions, and the capsules are inserted into and removed from the tubes through airlocks at stations along the route. After the capsules are accelerated to the design velocity (some 4,000 mph or 6,500 km/h), they coast for the remainder of the trip. There is no drag from traveling through air, and although small oscillations in the maglev suspension do cause a bit of inefficiency, it is a tiny fraction of the rather immense kinetic energy of an occupied capsule - which with a car of about 550 kg (1,212.5 lb) traveling at 4,000 mph is just about 244 kWh.
The capsule speed will depend on the length of the trip, as it takes time to accelerate. Given a nominal acceleration of 1 g, it takes about 3 minutes to reach 4,000 mph, at which point the capsule has traveled over 100 miles (161 km). ET3.com, Inc. believes that a reasonable speed for shorter trips is 370 mph (600 km/h). While tubes could be networked like freeways, with capsules automatically routed along their trip, local and long-distance trips would require separate maglev tubes to avoid unreasonable scheduling delays. Around the world in just over six hours isn't orbital velocity, but the practical benefits would be nearly the same - vital goods and talent delivered quickly to where they are needed.
Members of the ET3 consortium have worked with parties in China, where they say more than a dozen licenses for the company have been sold. As an open consortium, licensees become owners of the company and the group claims more than 60 licenses have also been sold in five different countries, with interest from several more. But with licenses selling through the ET3 website for US$100, a lot more people will need to get on board to turn the dreams of those behind the concept into a reality. The company is developing a 3D Virtual Ride for the system with those interested in hitching a ride able to submit their contact details here. Unfortunately, the prelaunch for the virtual ride was set for last year and it still hasn't eventuated.
Promising concept or pipe dream? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.
Source: ET3

It was envisaged in 17th century by Denis Papin, French physicist and mathematician who also invented the pressure cooker. Two centuries later the idea has been materialized by the Scottish engineer William Murdoch in the 19th century and was later developed by the London Pneumatic Dispatch Company. In 1859 Thomas Webster Rammell and Latimer Clark proposed the development of an underground tube network within central London "for the more speedy and convenient circulation of despatches and parcels". It seems the engineers had aspirations for the system to eventually transport all kinds of general freight, and passengers. The company initially raised £25,000 in order to test the technology and construct a pilot route. Early experiments were conducted at the Soho works of Boulton and Watt in Birmingham.

A permanent line was constructed between the Euston station of the London and North Western Railway (beneath platform one), and the North West District Post Office in Eversholt Street (1/3 mile), using a 30 inch diameter tube and similar technology to that tested at Battersea. The line was tested from 15th January 1863, and put into operation on 20th February 1863. A single capsule, conveying up to 35 bags of mail could make the short journey between terminals in one minute, twice the speed of mailcarts. 13 journeys were operated each day, with a daily operating cost of £1 4s 5d. The Post Office were charged a nominal fee for use of the service, presumably to encourage them to accept the technology.

Construction was re-started in 1868, when additional finance was found for the route, and it was completed to Newgate Street in 1869. The Newgate Street terminus was 1,658 yards from Holborn and 4,738 yards from Euston. The journey time from the General Post Office was 17 minutes, at speeds of up to 60 mph.
The company obtained further powers to construct additional routes in London from Parliament in August 1872.
At the beginning of 1874 the Post Office agreed to use the system for traffic from the Central Post Office to Euston. However it found only a 4 minute time saving to be achieved, and doubted the system's reliability or ability to convey heavier loads. In October 1874 the Post Office informed the company that there was no long term prospect of Post Office traffic on the system, and the system was shut.
The tubes were retained for at least 20 years, while the Post Office considered electric traction. The company was restored in 1895, in the belief that the Post Office would wish to use the old tunnels. Finally, the tunnels were purchased by the Post Office in 1921, to run telephone cables in... No wonder that in "Double or Die" by Charlie Higson the young James Bond travels down to the London docks on a disused underground pneumatic railway!

If in London there was only a talk about pneumatic passenger service, in New York such service was pretty close to realization. In January 1867, the Scientific American edited by Alfred Ely Beach ran a frontpage article describing the London parcel tube system and proposing the same thing for New York. This was still for small tubes, for mail and packages. It was later that month that the Senate Select Committee reported in favor of underground passenger railways, if the problem of motive power could be solved.
For the upcoming exhibition of the American Institute, Beach financed two demonstrations of pneumatic dispatch, one of which was large enough for passengers to ride in. The fair ran from September 12 to October 26, 1867. Shortly before the start of the fair, the Times predicted some startling novelties, among them a great pneumatic tube, through which the adventurous will be carried north and south according to the fancy or advice of their physicians.

In October the Scientific Americcan related that the exhibition may now be said to have reached its full glory … The most novel and attractive feature of the exhibition is by general consent conceded to be the Pneumatic Railway, erected by Mr A E Beach, of the Scientific American, and everyone visiting the Fair seems to consider himself specially called upon to visit, and, after actual experience, to pronounce his verdict upon this mode of traveling.
It was a 32.6 m long, 1.8 m diameter pipe that was capable of moving 12 passengers plus a conductor.

Beach published a promotional booklet in January 1868 called The Pneumatic Dispatch. Despite the title it covered both small dispatch tubes and larger passenger railways. The two English pneumatic railways were the models from which he was working. He credited Rammell for the concept of the entire car running in a pneumatic tube. This was what Beach wanted to do. The Rammell patents left many details of design and machinery to be developed, improved, and patented, by Beach and others.

In 1869, the Beach Pneumatic Transit Company of New York secretly constructed a 95 m long, 2.7 m 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, an immensely powerful local politician, did not want it to go ahead as he was intending to personally invest into competing schemes for an elevated rail line.
Of course, Beach had his own idea of an elevated:

There were other projects, too:

But the NY elevated was built in a more conventional manner. In the meanwhile, less sensational technology conquered cities and continents: the telegraph conveyor, that became the ultimate instrument of in-city express mail service. In London, it was operated since 1853, i.e. ten years before the Pneumatic Despatch inauguration. The system conveyed messages which had been transcribed from the telegraph. Mr Josiah Latimer Clark (future companion of Rammell) installed 675ft of 1 1/2 inch diameter tube, with messages conveyed in felt bags by pressure differentials generated by a single 6 horse power (hp) engine.
In 1858 the Electric and International Telegraph Company built another tube 3,120 ft long with a diameter of 2 1/4 inches, to an unknown location within London. Other tubes followed. By 1860 the Electric and International Telegraph Company systems had linked their central office in Lothbury with stations at the stock exchange, and at Cornhill. Systems were also installed outside of London, for example, that installed by Mr C. A. Varley in July 1864 in Liverpool.
Continental cities quickly followed suit: in 1865, the Rohrpost (tube mail) was inaugurated in Berlin, in 1866 in Paris, in 1867 in Vienna, in 1887 in Prague.

Parisian Pneumatique deserves a special attention: in the 20th century it became the world's largest with 467 kilometers in total length. The network was commenced by the construction of an experimental line between the telegraph offices at Grand Hotel and place de la Bourse.

Until 1898, the use of official stationary was obligatory - blue cards with imprinted stamp and an inscription Télégramme or Carte-Télégramme (the service was operated by the State Telegraph). The customers could chose between regular and "closed" cards. The latter were double-folded with perforated and glued margins. There were also "Pneumatic envelopes", also with imprinted stamp, and reply-paid postcards (with double tariff, naturally). After the admissibility of private stationery in 1898, many Parisian printers produced light weight envelopes inscribed 'Télégramme Pneumatique' or 'Service Pneumatique'.

For generations the pneumatic letter-card was known affectionately as the petit bleu since it was on blue paper and it was under this name that a 'Télégramme' 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.
Marseille also had its Pneumatique with special stationery:

Berlin tube network was the brainchild of Postmaster General Heinrich von Stephan who was also the Universal Postal Union founder. The Rohrpost was made available to the public in 1876 (before that it delivered only telegrams between the General Post Office and Stock Exchange). In 1900 it had 118 km in total length, connecting 15 post offices and delivering more than 6 million messagesi and small parcels annually.

Tube mail was also introduced in Munich, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt/Main, Dusseldorf and Chemnitz.

In Vienna, the pneumatic mail was opened to the public in 1875, beginning with modest 14 km line and expanding to 82,5 km in 1913. At its peak it connected 53 post offices, delivering 20,000 capsules per day.

Here's a letter from Serbia that made its final "leg" (between the main and the local post offices) by tube:

* * *
In New York the pneumatic mail service opened only in 1897, when both A E Beach and Boss Tweed were no more than a distant memory.

At the beginning of the 1890s Charles Emory Smith, a former newspaper editor and ambassador to Russia, was appointed Postmaster General. An $8 million pneumatic system was developed in major Eastern US cities. A 6 inch diameter, 3,000 foot long system was constructed in Philadelphia between 1892 and 1893, for the transport of mail between two post offices.
An 8 inch diameter line was added by Congress between 1897 and 1898, along with three new lines in New York and one in Boston. The lines allowed the movement of mail between post offices and neighbourhood post offices, and to railway terminals. In 1902 additional lines were added in New York and Chicago, with an additional lines in St Louis in 1906 taking the entire network to 63 miles of 'double tube'.

Canisters (capsules) containing up to 500 letters travelled at 30mph under the streets of a number of cities. By 1916 systems were in place in Boston (14 miles of tube), Chicago (20 miles), New York (55 miles), St Louis (4 miles) and Philadelphia (20 miles). Extensive use was made of some of the larger systems - typically a third of all first class letters passing through the New York mail system were distributed in part via pneumatic tubes.

In 1918 debate about the relative costs of different systems for moving mail came to the fore. A Congress committee found that use of the pneumatic tubes cost $17,000 per mile per annum, with rental charges for the tubes an 'exorbitant, unjustified and an extravagant waste of public funds'. This combined with the growth of the automobile and traffic control systems in major cities, marked the end of further development for the pneumatic mail networks. However, all but the Philadelphia system operated until the 1950s. In 1900 Charles Emory Smith had predicted that pneumatic tube systems would eventually link every household to the rest of the network. This dream was never to be realised; at least not yet...

Sources: Capsu.org, Beach Pneumatic by Joseph Brennan, The Pneumatic Post of Paris by J.D. Hayhurst O.B.E., Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Library of Congress.

More stamps & stationery in our Tube Mail album. Browse it or enjoy the slideshow:

About the Author

From an early age Brian wanted to become a scientist. He did, earning a Ph.D. in physics and embarking on an R&D career which has recently broken the 40th anniversary. What he didn't expect was that along the way he would become a patent agent, a rocket scientist, a gourmet cook, a biotech entrepreneur, an opera tenor and a science writer.
All articles by Brian Dodson

Pneumatic tube

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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 great complexity, but were mostly superseded. In some settings, such as hospitals, they remain widespread and have been further extended and developed in recent decades.^[1]
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 tubes in use at a drive-through bank.

Pneumatic capsule transportation was invented by William Murdoch. It was considered little more than a novelty until the invention of the capsule in 1836.^{[citation needed]} The Victorians were the first to use capsule pipelines to transmit telegrams, to nearby buildings from telegraph stations.
While they are commonly used for small parcels and documents – including as cash carriers at banks or supermarkets^[2] – 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, or where convenience and speed in a local environment is useful.^[1]
In the United States, drive-up banks often use pneumatic tubes to transport cash and documents between cars and tellers. Most hospitals have a computer-controlled pneumatic tube system to deliver drugs, documents and specimens to and from laboratories and nurses' stations.^[1] 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. NASA's original Mission Control Center had pneumatic tubes connecting controller consoles with staff support rooms. Denver International Airport uses many pneumatic tube systems, including a 25 cm diameter system for moving aircraft parts to remote concourses, a 10 cm system for United Airlines ticketing, and a robust system in the parking toll collection system with an outlet at every booth.

NASA Mission Control Center during the Apollo 13 mission. Note pneumatic tube canisters in console to the right.

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.^[3]
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.^[4]
Technology editor Quentin Hardy notes that renewed interest in transmission of data by pneumatic tube accompanies discussions of digital network security,^[5] and he cites research into London's forgotten pneumatic network.^[6]

Applications

In postal service

Pneumatic tube letter from Berlin, Germany, 1904

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),^{[citation needed]} but later were largely abandoned.
A major network of tubes in Paris was in use until 1984, when it was abandoned in favor of computers and fax machines. In Prague, in the Czech Republic, a network of tubes extending approximately 60 kilometres (37 mi) in length is used for delivering mail and parcels.^[7]
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 current applications are in banks, hospitals and supermarkets. Many large retailers use pneumatic tubes to transport cheques or other documents from cashiers to the accounting office.

Historical use

1853: linking the London Stock Exchange to the city's main telegraph station (a distance of 220 yards (200 m) )
1861: in London with the London Pneumatic Despatch Company providing services from Euston railway station to the General Post Office and Holborn
1865: in Berlin (until 1976), the Rohrpost, a system 400 kilometers in total length at its peak in 1940
1866: in Paris (until 1984, 467 kilometers in total length from 1934)
1875: in Vienna (until 1956)
1887: in Prague (until 2002 due to flooding), the Prague pneumatic post^[8]
1893: the first North American system was established in Philadelphia by Postmaster General John Wanamaker, who had previously employed the technology at his department store. The system, which initially connected the downtown post offices, was later extended to the principal railroad stations, the stock exchanges, and many private businesses. It was operated by the United States Post Office Department which later opened similar systems in cities such as New York (connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan), Chicago, Boston, and St. Louis. The last of these closed in 1953.^[9]
other cities: Munich, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Hamburg, Rome, Naples, Milan, Marseille, Melbourne, Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe^{[citation needed]}

In public transportation

19th century

In 1812, George Medhurst first proposed, but never implemented, blowing passenger carriages through a tunnel.^[10] 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:^[11]

1844–54: Dublin and Kingstown Railway's Dalkey Atmospheric Railway between Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire) and Dalkey, Ireland (1.75 mi (2.82 km))
1846–47: London and Croydon Railway between Croydon and New Cross, London, England (7.5 mi (12.1 km))
1847–48: Isambard Kingdom Brunel's South Devon Railway between Exeter and Newton Abbot, England (20 mi (32 km))
1847–60: Paris–Saint-Germain railway between Bois de Vésinet and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France (2 km (1.2 mi))

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).

Alfred Ely Beach's experimental pneumatic elevated subway on display in 1867

The 550-meter 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 32.6 m long, 1.8 m diameter pipe that was capable of moving 12 passengers plus a conductor. In 1869, the Beach Pneumatic Transit Company of New York secretly constructed a 95 m long, 2.7 m 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, an influential local politician, did not want it to go ahead as he was intending to personally invest into competing schemes for an elevated rail line.^[12]

20th century

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.

21st century

Research into trains running in partially evacuated tubes is continuing. For further information see Vactrain and Hyperloop.

In money transfer

Main article: Cash carrier

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.^[13]
Many banks with drive-throughs also use pneumatic tubes.^[2]

In medicine

Many hospitals have pneumatic tube systems which send samples to laboratories.^[1]^[14]

Technical characteristics

Modern systems (for smaller, i.e. "normal" tube diameters as used in the transport of small capsules) reach speeds of around 7.5 m (25 ft) per second, though some historical systems already achieved speeds of 10 m (33 ft) per second.^[1]^[15] Further, modern systems can also be computer-controlled, allowing, among other things, the tracking of any specific capsule. Varying air pressures also allow capsules to brake slowly, removing the jarring arrival that used to characterise earlier systems and make them unsuitable for fragile contents.^[1]

In fiction

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The pneumatic tube train from Albert Robida's The Twentieth Century.

When pneumatic tubes first came into use in the 19th century, they symbolized technological progress and it was imagined that they would be common in the future. Jules Verne's Paris in the Twentieth Century (1863) includes suspended pneumatic tube trains that stretch across the oceans. Albert Robida's The Twentieth Century (1882) describes a 1950s Paris where tube trains have replaced railways, pneumatic mail is ubiquitous, and catering companies compete to deliver meals on tap to people's homes through pneumatic tubes. Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) envisions the world of 2000 as interlinked with tubes for delivering goods,^[16] while Michel Verne's An Express of the Future (1888) questions the sensibility of a transatlantic pneumatic subway.^[17] In Michel & Jules Verne's The Day of an American Journalist in 2889 (1889) submarine tubes carry people faster than aero-trains and the Society for Supplying Food to the Home allows subscribers to receive meals pneumatically.^[18]
Later, because of their use by governments and large businesses, tubes began to symbolize bureaucracy. In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, pneumatic tubes in the Ministry of Truth deliver newspapers to Winston's desk containing articles to be "rectified". Robert A. Heinlein's 1949 novella Gulf offered a more neutral view of their use in general postal delivery.
Beginning with the 42nd issue of 181-issue Doc Savage Magazine (The Midas Man, Volume VII, No. 6, Aug 1936), Doc Savage's penthouse on the 86th floor of an unnamed New York City skyscraper (implicitly the Empire State Building) is linked to his Hidalgo Trading Company warehouse-boathouse-hangar on the Hudson River waterfront by pneumatic bullet-car nicknamed the Flea Run, Go-Devil and Angel-Wagon due to its hundred-mile per hour speed and that plummets straight down from the penthouse ninety stories to a sub-basement, makes a 90° turn to travel a mile and a quarter (a little over two kilometers) 60 feet (18 meters) below 34th Street and then comes back up to ground floor of the warehouse, presumably at a shallower but still steep incline. The interior of the car is heavily padded, with four seats, one behind the other bobsled fashion. Since the car does not turn around, the seats are designed to rotate 180° so that the passengers always face in the direction of travel. The acceleration is such that, when traveling down the tube from the 86th Floor, no sensation of falling is experienced. The system is driven by enormous air compressors and compressed air receiver vessels housed on the roofs of both the skyscraper and the Hidalgo Trading Company.
In a sequence in the 1968 film Baisers volés (Stolen Kisses), François Truffaut shows the fast transportation of a letter through the underground pneumatic tubes system in Paris. (This scene was later parodied in The Simpsons episode "Marge Gets a Job".)
In 1985, the movie Brazil also used tubes (as well as other anachronistic-seeming technologies) to evoke the stagnation of bureaucracy.
At the start of each episode of the 1998 television series Fantasy Island, a darker version of the original, bookings for would-be visitors to the Island were sent to Mr. Roarke via a pneumatic tube from a dusty old travel agency.
The 1994 film version of The Shadow includes a sequence in which the camera follows a message capsule as it speeds through a pneumatic tube system. The implication is that the Shadow maintains a private network of tubes for the transportation of secret messages.
The failure of pneumatic tubes to live up to their potential as envisaged in previous centuries has placed them in the company of flying cars and dirigibles as ripe for ironic retro-futurism. The animated television series The Jetsons featured pneumatic tubes that people could step into and be sucked up and swiftly spat out at their destination. In the animated television series Futurama, set in the 31st century, large pneumatic tubes are used in cities for transporting people, whilst smaller ones are used to transport mail. The tubes in Futurama are also used to depict the endless confusion of bureaucracy: an immense network of pneumatic tubes connects all offices in New New York City to the "Central Bureaucracy", with all the capsules being deposited directly into a huge pile in the main filing room, with no sorting or organization.
In Ghostbusters II, the "river of slime" under New York city is found by the Ghostbusters boys to be flowing through an old pneumatic tube line – a reference to the Beach Pneumatic Transit tube.
In the 1998 PC game Grim Fandango, pneumatic tubes play a role at Manny's office.
In the American television show Lost, the Dharma Initiative's Pearl research station has a pneumatic tube system. The character Locke put his drawing of the blast door map in the tube without a capsule. It was sucked up into the tube, indicating the system still functioned. The tube from the Pearl leads to a capsule dump.
In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five pneumatic tubes are used as a way to transport information from one place to the next when covering news articles.
In the popular video game BioShock, pneumatic tubes transport various items throughout the fictional city of Rapture. In Portal and Portal 2, two other popular games, Aperture Science uses Pneumatic tubes to transport larger-scale objects such as boxes of all kinds throughout their enrichment center.
Douglas Adams's 1998 computer game Starship Titanic features the "Succ-U-Bus" in almost every room –a pneumatic pipe transport system which goes all around the ship; players must understand and use the Succ-U-Bus in order to progress and solve the puzzles.
Umberto Eco in his novel The Prague Cemetery has one character, Simonini, send a "petit blue message by pneumatic post". Presumably these messages were on small pieces of blue paper.
In the 2004 Movie The Polar Express, 'The Pnuematic' transports elves and lead characters from the main control room to various places throughout the North Pole.
In the CBS series, Person of Interest, a pneumatic tube network is used to avoid tracking of communication by electronic means. The network is shown in the mafia war in the 21st episode of the fourth season, 'Asylum'.
In the 2014 Movie Kingsman: The Secret Service, a four-seat pneumatic tube shuttle is used to link the downtown tailors office to the country estate & training area.