this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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Today I Learned

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I was reading A Coffin for Dimitrios (great book), and found a character saying "send me a pneumatique when you get to Paris." And in fact, there was a series of pneumatic tubes to speed the mail in Paris for over 100 years. Thought it was cool. Here's the wiki as well.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 minutes ago

Whose the US asshole that sent a cat

In the early 1900s, you could send pretty much whatever could fit in a standard cylinder. Theatre tickets, bills, postcards, novels and cats (yes, this did happen in New York’s pneumatic post) all whizzed around underground and reached their recipient in just an hour.

Name and shame

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 hours ago

Prague did until 2002

[–] JASN_DE 14 points 8 hours ago

The technology is still in use today and new systems are built, e.g. for moving around kab samples in large hospitals or industrial sites. Pretty hard to email those.

[–] grue 23 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Some of those systems are still around. For example, Roosevelt Island in NYC has a pneumatic trash collection system. Apparently it's the only part of NYC that doesn't have trash piling up on the streets/sidewalks all the time.

[–] FlyingSquid 6 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

New York almost had a pneumatic subway system, but the inventor tried to go around Boss Tweed. Big mistake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Pneumatic_Transit

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Pneumatic transit and atmospheric rail were kinda a fad in the 1800s. Even if it had been built it would have mainly been an attraction rather than a mode of transport. They were never really able to hammer out the kinks with maintenance and safety.

Funnily enough an atmospheric rail incident on the Dalkey atmospheric railway was more than likely the first time a human sustained a land speed over 100mph.

The son of the owner accidentally loosed the break on a single carriage that was supposed to convey a whole train and accidentally shot himself off alone, covering about 2 miles of track in less than 75 sec. Which in the 1840's would have been like engaging a Victorian warp drive.

[–] FlyingSquid 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Oh yeah, the people mover is really cool. Always been a goal to actually ride it if I ever make it down to Brazil.

It's a little bit easier to make them work nowadays with modern materials, rubber is probably a little more pleasant of a sealing material to work with compared to the og bearskin and lard.

Though one of the benefits of the lard is that the og one always smelled like a fry up when in use.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 minutes ago

Bearskin and lard?

[–] Noite_Etion 36 points 12 hours ago

A letter from The Central Bureaucracy.

"Attention, Hermes Conrad"

"You are about to receive a letter from The Central Bureaucracy."

My God!

It's from The Central Bureaucracy!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 hours ago

Prague still has one although it's not in use any more

[–] [email protected] 19 points 13 hours ago

This is so steampunk I love it

[–] [email protected] 8 points 12 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Probably shut down when someone shit in it

[–] [email protected] 15 points 12 hours ago

now this is shitposting

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago

Ah, a picture of the internet pipes....

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago

Was an interesting read, things like that just seem so cool