page_title: Pneumatic tube
section_title: Historical use
hierarchical_section_title: Pneumatic tube / History / Historical use
caption_attribution_description: English: Pneumatic tubes at a bank.
context_page_description: Pneumatic tubes are systems that propel cylindrical containers through networks of tubes by compressed air or by partial vacuum. They are used for transporting solid objects, as opposed to conventional pipelines, which transport fluids. Pneumatic tube networks gained acceptance in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for offices that needed to transport small, urgent packages over relatively short distances. Some installations grew to great complexity, but were mostly superseded. In some settings, such as hospitals, they remain widespread and have been further extended and developed in the 21st century.
  A small number of pneumatic transportation systems were also built for larger cargo, to compete with more standard train and subway systems. However, these never gained popularity.
context_section_description: Pneumatic transportation was invented by William Murdoch around 1799. The Victorians were the first to use capsule pipelines to transmit telegrams, to nearby buildings from telegraph stations.  The system is known as pneumatic dispatch.
  In 1854 Josiah Latimer Clark was issued a patent "for conveying letters or parcels between places by the pressure of air and vacuum." In 1853 he installed a 220-yard (200 m) pneumatic system between the London Stock Exchange in Threadneedle Street, London, and the offices of the Electric Telegraph Company in Lothbury.  The Electric Telegraph Company used the system to acquire stock prices and other financial information to pass to subscribers of their service over their telegraph wires.  The advantage of the pneumatic system was that without it the company would have had to employ runners to carry messages between the two buildings, or else employ trained telegraph operators within the Stock Exchange.  In the mid-1860s, the company installed similar systems to local stock exchanges in Liverpool, Birmingham, and Manchester.  After the telegraphs were nationalised in Britain, the pneumatic system continued to be expanded under Post Office Telegraphs.  By 1880 there were over 21 miles of tube in London.  A tube was laid between the Aberdeen fish market office and the head post office to facilitate the rapid sale of a very perishable commodity.
  While they are commonly used for small parcels and documents–including as cash carriers at banks or supermarkets–they were originally proposed in the early 19th century for transport of heavy freight. It was once envisaged that networks of these massive tubes might be used to transport people.
caption: Pneumatic tubes at a drive-through bank
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