Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Pneumatic Mail Tubes



Above is a postcard from the Sesquicentennial Exposition that was held in Philadelphia in 1926. The image on the postcard is of the United States Post Office pneumatic mail tube terminals at the General Post Office in New York. According to the information printed on the postcard, 5.000,000 letters were sent daily through underground pneumatic mail tubes in New York City.

Pneumatic tubes were used for mail in several large cities of the United States and Europe starting in the second half of the 19th century, but they were largely abandoned during the 20th century. The New York Post Office used the tubes for mail from 1897 to 1953. Pneumatic tubes were in the basements of post offices where postal clerks filled, sent, opened and emptied the cylinder containers that carried the mail through the network of tubes. The operators that sent and received the cylinders carrying the mail were sometimes called Rocketeers.

Mail was loaded into airtight cylinders that were propelled by compressed air. The cylinders used by the New York City Post Office could hold 500-600 letters. They were 24 inches long, 8 inches wide and weighed 21 pounds. Doors on each end of the cylinders locked by cam. (source: The Pneumatic Mail Tubes: New York's Hidden Highway And Its Development by Robert A. Cohen)

image source: National Postal Museum

The picture below shows  a New York Post Office pneumatic tube circa 1914-1915 (source: Library of Congress)

 


For More Vintage Images


23 comments:

  1. I knew a man who was a collector of Pneumatic tube mail. I never had a chance to see any of the collection before he passed away at the age of 92. I have no idea what happened to the collection. I guess the mail must have had a certain post mark the noted it as being moved by pneumatic tubes.

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  2. I've never heard of this system. Thanks for posting.

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  3. I'd love a job title like Rocketeer! How cool is that!

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  4. Very interesting. I used to love the tubes in department stores. I'm with Wendy...Rocketeer is the best job title I've heard in years.

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  5. Another interesting twist on this week's theme.
    Nancy

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  6. This is something I had never heard of before. A very interesting post.

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  7. what a great spin on the theme.
    I love this!!
    At the hospital,
    when I started, a long time ago now,
    we had an old pneumatic system and the tube your showing is not that far removed form the ones we were using. The system was eventually abandon for a while, but a new one was installed a few years ago, all automated and fancy...
    Truly a thrill to see this old pic!!
    :)~
    HUGZ

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  8. I wonder if they got this idea from the department store cash railways (like I wrote about last sepia Saturday) as they were definitely in use here by the 1880s. Interesting how other uses can be found for similar technologies.

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  9. Presumably, they're sent within the Post Office system, from branch to branch and not to the recipient.

    I've never heard of this before, and must see what can be found.

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  10. Another thing about Sepians, they tend to teach me something new every week. Great picture, but I love the description and comments just as much. Bravo.

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  11. We had a similar tube mail at Schiphol Airport. It was used for all kinds of documents and tickets. But in the Cargo Department we had one that could move complete board cases carrying all the aircraft's cargo documents such as the manifest, air waybills etc. Because of its enormous size it was called "Fat Bertha". Originally that name was the nickname of huge canon that the Germans used during WW1. It was manufactured by Krupp.
    In any case, I like your interpretation of the theme!

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  12. In my first ever Saturday job they had tubes for sending the cash upstairs when the tills got too full. I was too junior to be allowed near them!

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  13. Pneumatic tubes were used to transfer steel samples to the laboratory for analysis and in the days of spectrographs the results would be sent back. This was much quicker tan a "sample boy" could deliver them.
    I can se their usefulness in postal sorting office.

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  14. I can understand a post office having a pneumatic tube terminal, but where would the tubes have been sent to? Perhaps another post office, because I can't imagine even a large business having their own terminal.

    I'd not heard of these larger cousins to the department store cash transporting tubes - interesting take on the theme thank you.

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  15. A terrific spin on the idea of delivering messages. I can see the value in central NYC and Philadelphia when mail was delivered twice a day. It seems like such a complex infrastructure to build and the engineers must have said, "this will last forever!"

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  16. I learned a new (to me) old word today - pneumatic tube. Oh and 'rocketeers' too. Thanks, I appreciate that. Amazing these cylinders.

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  17. Learned something new - I'd never heard of the pneumatic tube system!

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  18. Good Lord! I Never Knew They Did That!I can remember several old shops had similar in-house methods for transferring reciepts between departments..But A Whole City!!!!Very Buck Rodgers!

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  19. First that I have ever heard about any of this ... it is very fascinating and I am glad that you shared it with us!

    Kathy M.

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  20. I remember my mother talking about these tubes in department stores for sending money.

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  21. I remember the dept store tubes also, now all gone. In the USA where there are drive up windows for banking and drugstores, these tubes or something like them are still used.

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  22. This was so interesting! It's always so enjoyable to learn new things here, but also to see where Alan's theme takes people! Great post!

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  23. Fascinating can be a rather overworked comment on blog posts : but this post really deserves the description. Perfect reading for a Sunday, perfect pictures to match the theme.

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