Happy August! As I mentioned last Sunday, I’m on vacation with family so don’t have a new post this week. Many of you have joined relatively recently, however, so I thought I’d share some older ones that delve into a peculiar passion of mine: pneumatic tubes.

Pneumatic tubes are pipes pumped with compressed air to move things inside them at varying speeds. Think of those old-school bank drive-thrus, for example. They used to be a fixture in department stores, delivered mail in major cities, and some even tried to use them for public transport.

They’re also still used prominently in one industry… but we’ll get to that below.

I hope you enjoy!

The first two posts I’m sharing are about how, for over 50 years, mail in New York City traveled 30 miles per hour via an underground pneumatic tube system. One of the first items through, however, was a live tomcat (the cat made it out okay, though I’m sure it wasn’t happy about the journey).

Pneumatic tubes are also a novelty in some bars and restaurants. Want to know if there’s one near you? I found five around the world that use the tubes in some capacity, even for mixing drinks! Here they are:

And finally (for this post, at least), pneumatic tubes are alive and well in one industry: healthcare. Almost all major hospitals have at least one system, and I interviewed the engineers who manage them. Check these two articles out: