Pneumatic tube
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, pneumatic tube networks gained acceptance in offices that needed to transport small, urgent packages, such as mail, other paperwork, or money, over relatively short distances, within a building or, at most, within a city.
[3] In 1854, Josiah Latimer Clark was issued a patent "for conveying letters or parcels between places by the pressure of air and vacuum".
That expansion was due to Joseph William Willmot (previously employed at the Electric & International Telegraph Company) improving Latimer-Clark's invention in 1870 with the "double sluice pneumatic valve" and, in 1880, the "intermediate signaller/quick break switch for pneumatic tubes", which dramatically sped up the process, and made it possible for a number of carrier messages to be in the tube at any one time.
[7] While they are commonly used for small parcels and documents, including cash carriers at banks or supermarkets,[8] in the early 19th century, they were proposed for transport of heavy freight.
While its use for communicating information has been superseded by electronics, pneumatic tubes are widely used for transporting small objects, where convenience and speed in a local environment are important.
Many hospitals have a computer-controlled pneumatic tube system to deliver drugs, documents, and specimens to and from laboratories and nurses' stations.
Samples must be moved from the nuclear reactor core, in which they are bombarded with neutrons, to the instrument that measures the resulting radiation.
[14] 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.
It was invented by the Scottish engineer William Murdoch in the 19th century and was later developed by the London Pneumatic Despatch Company.
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).
In 1867 at the American Institute Fair in New York, Alfred Ely Beach demonstrated a 100-foot (30 m) long, 6-foot (1.8 m) diameter pipe that was capable of moving 12 passengers plus a conductor.
[34] 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.
In 1967 he proposed a Bay Area Gravity-Vacuum Transit for California that would run alongside the then-under construction BART system.
To descend, electronically controlled valves inside the tubular shaft regulate the entry and exit of air within the cylinder lowering the car smoothly by means of programmed operation.
[37] Many other department stores had pneumatic tube systems in the 20th century, such as Jacksons of Reading and Myer in Melbourne, Australia.
The use of pneumatic tubes in waste disposal units include the Masjid al-Haram, Mecca,[38] GlashusEtt in the Hammarby Sjöstad area of Stockholm (Sweden), Old Montreal (Canada), Disney World (US) and Roosevelt Island and Hudson Yards (US).
Uses include conveying spare parts, measuring instruments, tools, or work pieces alongside conveyor belts or in the production process.
For example, the industrial company ThyssenKrupp sends 900 °C (1,650 °F) steel samples through pneumatic tubes at a rate of 22 m (72 ft) per second from the furnace to the laboratory.
[1][40] 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.
