The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-01-21
PvEUMArIo PosrA1 SERVICE.
Paris Successful System Likely Soon to be
 Widely Adopted Here.
[From the Washington Evening starl

I this country will be provided with sys- tems for conveying messages and tele- grams by means of pneumatic tubes underground. Already quite number of the centres of population in Europe enjoy the advantages of this improv- ment. which as been brought to the | highest degree of perfection in Paris. In that city compressed air distributed | from central stations is supplied for motive power to factories, for the gen. eration of electricity, for the ventila- 1 tion of large buildings, for operating elevators and clocks in public and pri- | vate buildings, etc. It is also employed | for pumping water and refrigerating and cleaning. Its use as motive pow | CT for street car lines is extending rap idly.
 In Paris the pneumatic tube system | affords cheap, speedy and always re- ! liable method of postal communication. | It is employed not only for the purpose | of sending messages originating in the | city, but also for the distribution to substattons, in all parts of the capital, of telegrams from the provinces and from abroad. Less than an hour is re- l quired ordinarily for the transmission of a message within the city limits that is to say, from the time of mailing to it's final delivery at the house ad- | dressed This system is so successful and so we'll adopted to the needs of the people that the use of the electric telegraph in Paris itself Is comparative ly small. The pneumatic telegram has many advantages over the wire. There can be no such thing as a block caused by rush of business. The operator takes all the messages at the same time and places them in a box, which is at once despatched to the substaton in the proper quarter of the city No err TOTS in transmission occur The mes- sage travels at the rate of about forty miles an hour. The written cards or telegrams are enclosed in cylindrical boxes of sheet iron, with envelopes of leather, and these are fastened together in trains" before they are started on journey. They travel through pipes underground, which pass along the gal leries of the sewers wherever that is practicable.
 There used to be a great deal of trouble, previous to the construction of
 
 hitting telegrams rapidly enough be- tween the central telegraph office at Paris and the Bourse or Stock Ex- change. An effort was made to over come this difficulty by means of cour- iers, who made trips every fifteen min utes between the great market and the central office. These couriers conveyed the latest quotations from Bourse to the central station, whence they were disseminated far and wide by tele- graph. Retiring they carried to the Bourse messages sent to Paris by wire from the provinces and from abroad This was only a temporary expedient and it was soon supplanted by a sub teranean conduit from the Bourse to the central office, distance of 765 yards, This was the beginning of the pneumatic telegraphs of Paris, which now form a network communicating with every part of the capital. To-day the aggregate length of these lines Is 156 miles.
 There are 105 postal bureaus or branch postofices in Paris, all of which are equipped with pneumatic tubes. The total cost up to date has been
 
 soldered iron tubes, the sections being connected by joints and bolts. The in- terior diameter of the tube is two and a half to three inches. They are sunk in the earth at an average depth of about three feet. The boxes forming the train contain about thirty-five mes- sages each. The leather coverings or dinarily wear out after they have trav- eled 1,200 miles, when, of course, they are renewed. At the beginning the wa ter works of the city of Paris were used to furnish power for compressing the air, but steam power has been substi- tuted and is now employed exclusively
 A project has been formulated and is now under study by the French gov ernment, for the substitution of cleo tricity for compressed air as motive power. This project, which would in volve an enormous outlay, contemplates the construction of a system of small | gauge railways laid underground in tubes to be operated by electricity. It is improbable that this project will be 1 adopted in the near future, if at all. | The present system Is operated very and with great economy.
 
 among engineers as to whether better | results would be obtained from tubular | electric railways, while there is strong and growing opposition to the indefinite | of underground electric | currents.
 The department of state will soon l publish quite an elaborate report on the | subject, in the course of which it is | mentioned that the cost of pneumatic | is very much less than that | 1f electric telegrams in the United | States. The length of the message is only limited by the space of the cards | sold for the purpose. A sealed telegram which contain quite a communication | costs only ten cents. It is not exposed | 70 the danger of mistake in transmits sion or to public scrutiny, and as a general rule, reaches its destiny almost IS quickly as an electrical telegram.