The return of pneumatic tubes

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/19/1093446/pneumatic-tubes-hospitals/

by pseudolus • 2 years ago

142 159 2 years ago

I'd love to see an advanced citywide or intra-city logistics system using pneumatic tubes or evacuated tubes in general.

There's interesting non-pneumatic work from the Swiss company Cargo Sous Terrain, with self-poweres robot carriers shuttling materials around a city. Haven't heard or seen much in specifics, but their design material looks flashy & cool, and they supposedly are doing a tunnel. https://spectrum.ieee.org/cargo-sous-terrain

Outside of Atlanta GA, there's Pipedream, which launched a modest-sized intra-city auto omous robot delivery system at the end of 2023, which is cool. https://interestingengineering.com/transportation/worlds-fir...

It probably isn't worth the trouble nor a real efficiency gain but the idea of evacuated tubes with low air resistance or maybe even using real pneumatic pressure sounds cool. Especially for longer distances, higher capacities, the idea of some kind of hyperloop like system but a bit smaller & not human rated would be neat, could eliminate a colossal amount of CO2 & effort.

Animats2• 2 years ago

Cargo Sous Terrain

They've been "studying" and issuing PR since 2013, but so far, zero deployment. They are doing worse than The Boring Company.

ianburrell• 2 years ago

I wonder if anyone has done small electric cars on rail(s) in small tunnel like foot to meter diameter. It could do larger tunnel, would be easier to route, and doesn't have to be kept at pressure. My guess is that it is more efficient the pneumatic tubes and easier to deploy. Could probably even use the same containers as above-ground robots or aerial drones.

overengineer2• 2 years ago

I want them with gopros livestreaming

kalleboo2• 2 years ago

You had the Mail Rail back in 1927 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Post_Office_Railway

Edit: and before that the Chicago tunnels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company

YurgenJurgensen2• 2 years ago

For those smaller ceiling-mounted pod rail things in the Sous Terrain mockups, I'm surprised they're not extending them overground (and that they've dropped them from newer infographics).

Tiny elevated rails seems like it avoids a lot of the problems of both surface-level and flying delivery robots. I'm imagining that they either terminate inside businesses or form up in some kind of stacker that resembles those delivery lockers when full.

(Of course, I know the real reason: It's because humans on mopeds are cheaper, but they're not more efficient.)

bee_rider• 2 years ago

You could fit a lot of data in a pneumatic tube capsule full of SSDs, haha. It might give the old hatchback a run for its money.

metabagel2• 2 years ago

Still doesn't beat the transfer speed of a jumbo jet full of data tapes.

mikewarot2• 2 years ago

How about the Emma Marsk loaded with SSD drives?

robocat2• 2 years ago

The 747-8F Freighter has PAYLOAD 140000 kg / 308647 lbs with CRUISE SPEED 901 kph / 559 mph with HOLD SIZE 5430x486x304 cm / 2137x191x119 in

A 12TB (uncompressed) Q2078A LTO-8 tape weighs 285.8g Depth: 111mm Height: 45.7mm Width: 113mm

An SSD has better data density. For example Samsung 990 Pro 4TB M.2 NVMe SSD: DIMENSION (WxHxD) 80 x 22 x 2.3 mm with WEIGHT Max 9.0g Weight

Highest density would be raw NAND flash chips: ICs would be ideal.

Maybe 12 inch wafers would be feasible but likely lower data density because flash chips are densely stacked within an IC.

m4632• 2 years ago

What if you filled the tube with fiber?

crtasm• 2 years ago

Then you'd need twice as many SSDs!

BenFranklin1004• 2 years ago

One would think the advent of modern, semi-autonomous robots could fulfill much of the function of pneumatic tubes for transporting small packages across a facility.

KerrAvon2• 2 years ago

That sounds both less efficient and possibly actively dangerous in any reasonably large facility. It will certainly be slower than tube delivery.

BenFranklin1004• 2 years ago

High upfront capital costs for tube infrastructure and relative inflexibility once set up might dominate the decision.

gagagaga7• 2 years ago

When you’re transporting a patient from cardiac theatre to ICU down a long corridor which allows space for a bed and additional equipment (pumps, cardiac assist devices, nitric oxide dispensers) and not much else, it is super annoying (maybe dangerous) to have to negotiate a pass with a robot. I guess you can prewarn the hospital to clear the path, but pneumatic tubes work well and once installed seem very low cost to use/maintain.

BenFranklin1004• 2 years ago

I was mainly thinking of use cases outside hospitals. We need to transport items within our facility, and a robot operating at night or in less trafficked areas seemed a better solution. I can see the value of pneumatics in a real-time, busy hospital setting.

alexwasserman3• 2 years ago

In NYC Rsosevelt Island solved their trash problems (which plague the rest of the city) with an underground pneumatic trash network: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/suck-it-roosevelt-isla...

Buildings have a connection into which trash is sucked away to the central yard for processing. It's pretty neat and helps keep the island tidy. You don't get any of the normal huge trash piles that litter Manhattan on trash day.

Conversely, our local hospital is now using robots for deliveries. They trundle around and deliver things like meds to the nurses stations on request, and announce it with "Your delivery has arrived".

Just watching robots trundle around as though it's normal is an interesting slow creep towards what seemed so futuristic in Star Wars in the 70s and 80s. Now our local supermarkets (BJs and Stop and Shop) have robots that trundle around checking inventory as well.

fusslo• 2 years ago

my office adjoins a factory where we produce what we engineer in the offices.

The factory has two or maybe three different types of robots delivering all sorts of things from packages to packaging to stainless steel bar.

the robots use the same walkways as the humans.

It seems more and more we are designing robots to occupy and utilize the same spaces as humans. And we're designing the robots to make the humans give way: they're slow, large, bulky, and just stop when confronted. I think it's because humans are a much better robot.

humans (generally, of course) are more agile, can route easily, and move our bodies in unexpected ways to accomplish the task (lift a box up from waist height over an obstacle for example)

though I do get a LITTLE annoyed every time I have to walk around the stupid floor mopping robot in my local stop & shop

alexwasserman3• 2 years ago

the robots use the same walkways as the humans.

How much of this is that the robots are far newer than the buildings? How soon till new buildings are designed with designated robotic paths?

Plenty of buildings are designed with hidden back-of-the-building areas and access routes for maintenance humans. I assume pretty soon they'll have the same for robots too. Then we'll really hit the Star Trek "time to climb through a duct to save the day/stuck robot" type situations.

sandworm101• 2 years ago

> I do get a LITTLE annoyed every time I have to walk around the stupid floor mopping robot

I ran into one of these things late one night after checking into a hotel. Dead tired, I got off the elevator and was walking down the hall when this 3-foot high dalek started following me. "Can I get you some towels?" I retreated into my room. The next morning I almost tripped over it. It had spent the night outside my door... stalking me.

animal531• 2 years ago

Here in the 3rd world we still often use people instead of robots mainly due to cost, but it's definitely changing. Why struggle with government rules, unions and individuals if a machine can do it?

Jobs are already really hard to come by on all the unskilled levels, it's a bit grim to be honest.

seanmcdirmid3• 2 years ago

TIL a new (to me) word. No wonder I did poorly on the GRE language section.

trun·dled, trun·dling. to cause (a circular object) to roll along; roll. to convey or move in a wagon, cart, or other wheeled vehicle; wheel: The farmer trundled his produce to market in a rickety wagon. Archaic. to cause to rotate; twirl; spin.

fuzztester8• 2 years ago

roll
wheel
rotate

Trundle sounds vaguely treadmill, which also has something to do with rotation :)

Wonder if the two words are etymologically related.

Qworg• 2 years ago

To add, it is more "to move heavily" - it has a negative correlation to agility and speed.

Cars don't trundle, overloaded trucks do.

stevekemp• 2 years ago

Fun piece of trivia, in the UK those (distance) measuring wheels are called "Trundle Wheels", which is a little redundant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveyor%27s_wheel

thaumasiotes5• 2 years ago

I have a strong sense that modern use of this word is nearly all wiktionary's sense 5: "to move, heavily or clumsily". Wheels don't enter into it.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trundle#Verb

kjkjadksj4• 2 years ago

I don't understand why they don't enforce dumpsters like any other big city. Then again if there is perpetual incompetence in nyc, it probably means corrupted parties and individuals benefit from the situation somehow.

mattficke• 2 years ago

They’re starting to roll out trash containers in the city, should have been done years ago. There’s a bunch of interconnected factors: all residential buildings in NYC get municipal trash pickup (most other cities require private trash service for large apartment buildings), Manhattan doesn’t have many alleys so trash has to go out front, on-street parking blocks larger curbside bins and using exclusively wheeled cans would crowd the sidewalks. They finally decided to remove some parking spaces to allow for large curbside bins.

nsayoda• 2 years ago

Lack of space. A trash pile that is gone in 24 to 48 hours isn't permanent - whereas a dumpster is. Not to mention, access to that dumpster by a truck would be difficult.

Hypothetical, but when you have a single block of 10 buildings, each housing 500 people - the trash generated is a lot and if each were to have their own dumpster parked outside, where would cars or delivery trucks park? If parking is allowed between the dumpsters, how would the trucks access those dumpsters? There's no room to park them off-street because the buildings typically abut next to each other without alleys in between.

That's without even mentioning that even if multiple buildings share a dumpster - then you run into the question of how do you deal with illegal dumping? How do you bill each building for trash removal? See: "The Absurd Problem of New York City Trash" by NY Times (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/02/upshot/nyc-tr...)

No paywall version: https://archive.ph/XFAFg

Discussion on that article: https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/1b5i1xk/the_...

A study: https://manhattan.institute/article/innovative-waste-managem...

What I'm trying to get at is that the trash problem in NYC, and any proposed solution, raises a lot more questions than anything else.

I for one, would love to see Amsterdam inspired under-sidewalk bins (https://www.core77.com/posts/102208/Amsterdams-Smart-System-...)

pyuser5832• 2 years ago

Isn’t it because they don’t have alleys?

pyuser5832• 2 years ago

They “trundle?” That’s a cool word.

racl101• 2 years ago

I too like learning new words. Seems like a synonym for 'lumbering' minus the awkward part.

falcor84• 2 years ago

Just watching robots trundle around as though it's normal is an interesting slow creep towards what seemed so futuristic in Star Wars in the 70s and 80s.

My nostalgic reference for this is R.A.L.F. from Flight of the Navigator - https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/R.A.L.F.

bsder• 2 years ago

Your link is missing the trailing period so it goes to a non-existent page.

The correct link is: <https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/R.A.L.F.>

Xophmeister• 2 years ago

I used to live in an area with a similar system for rubbish (near Wembley Stadium, in north west London). While it worked, it suffered from a number of “quality of life” issues.

The chute terminals had quite a small aperture, with a sealed door; presumably to make it easier to create the necessary pressure differential. This happened regularly; every 30 minutes (or so) during daylight hours. It was loud. Really loud! With several terminals in a courtyard, running in a sequence, it was almost a never ending reverberation.

Of course, you can’t use them while they’re in this cycle. If anyone overfilled them — which was very easy — or ended up jamming the door open with some misshapen detritus then, try as it might, it just wouldn’t work at all. The building management were regularly seen wielding a broom, to try to force stuck loads down. Then, if you had anything that just couldn’t be made small enough for the chute, you had to use the (limited) dumpsters anyway; many did, because it was often just easier.

That’s not to say I think it wasn’t a good idea. It just needed its rough edges smoothed out a bit.

lucioperca• 2 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33R6eoPoczs

ortusdux3• 2 years ago

I've been interested in Laundry Jet, which is a pneumatic laundry chute. The obvious concern is issues with blockages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6xJ4K7WSQw

KerrAvon2• 2 years ago

This is really cool and I’d actually love to have it.

The main issue with it — aside from the limited market; how many houses are big enough to justify the cost, and how many of those are new construction or to-the-studs remodeled in any given year? — will be reliability over time. Central vac systems eventually fail and generally homeowners find it simpler to buy a normal vacuum than to fix the system.

Now this seems like a job for semi-autonomous robots.

metabagel2• 2 years ago

My family had a house with a central vacuum system in the late 70s. The vacuum was located in the garage, and it detected the loss of suction and turned on when you opened the wall flap to insert the hose. But, yeah, I've always wondered what you do when the seals fail or the vacuum stops working. Our house also had intercoms.

j45• 2 years ago

It also may be less about the size of the house and more about the time accrued with said laundry.

Maybe the math of it will end up on something like https://efficiencyiseverything.com/

constantcrying• 2 years ago

The house I grew up in had quite a large central pillar with a hole in it. The purpose was that dirty laundry from the rooms for the adults/children, which we're on the first floor, could be transported to the cellar where the washing machine was.

I still remember when as a child a "situation" arose and I managed to block it with my clothes and my parents had to clear the blockage.

Animats2• 2 years ago

There are big versions of that for hospitals and hotels. It seems overkill for a house.

Around 2018, there were companies selling home-sized laundry folding machines for rather high prices. Those seem to have disappeared.

ortusdux3• 2 years ago

There can be code/insurance issues with laundry chutes as some view them as fire hazards, so I think these pneumatic systems are a compliant alternative.

smusamashah• 2 years ago

I found some videos on youtube of hospital pneumatic systems. Not sure they are the ones this article is talking about. Also haven't found any detailed video about these modern systems.

pseudolus• 2 years ago

"Untapped New York" featured an interesting article about the pneumatic tube mail system that was used in NYC:

https://untappedcities.com/2023/10/17/pneumatic-tube-mail-ne...

A lot of the material was also incorporated in their podcast about the same subject:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pneumatic-tube-mail-in...

cypherpunks012• 2 years ago

Yes, the NYC pneumatic tube mail is fascinating!

These tubes were large, 24"L x 8" diameter. You could fit all sorts of stuff in there. It's so interesting to think that food, mail, and small package delivery in NYC could have peaked way back when pneumatic tubes were used (of course only in the optimal case with start/end near one of the 23 tube stations). Also really cool that there was a tube that ran over the Brooklyn bridge for sending mail or burritos between boroughs.

For further reading on unique NYC infrastructure, the New York City steam system is also very interesting and still in operation.

weinzierl• 2 years ago

I grew up near Germany's biggest electronics retailers[1] head quarters and they had these tubes ending in their consumer store.

When I was building something and needed a certain component I could just ride my bicycle a few kilometers over the country, say what I needed and a couple of minutes later it would pop out of a tube behind the counter.

I am not very nostalgic, but I miss this immediacy and hope to live long enough to see drone delivery become ubiquitous.

[1] Think RadioShack, but not RadioShack. They claimed to be Europe's biggest, but I have no idea if this was ever true.

conductr4• 2 years ago

I feel like a lot of retail should function similar to this way. Stores with shelves of homogenous "stock" is basically asking your customers to navigate a big warehouse while carrying around all their intended purchases; then go stand in a line to pay for those items. They could often easily function as big vending machines. Some stores could be reduced to a few shelves/aisles of 1-sample-per-SKU, where you just scan the barcode from your phone and all your items get sent to you. Preferably not one at a time and not right to the customer, I'd make it where the customer just goes and collects their bagged/carted items when done scanning. The payment could occur at the same time.

Using a grocery store as an example. I'm not a fan of shopping on my phone for some things like groceries. I like to look at the boxes and visually scan the shelves and see things I might not think to search for on my phone. This would allow for it but remove the need to walk up and down 30 aisles. I would still want to pick my produce/meat so this would require a slightly different approach, but the dry goods and other stuff that's typically in center of the store could work.

akira25012• 2 years ago

is basically asking your customers to navigate a big warehouse while carrying around all their intended purchases

Yes. And when you do that they tend to buy more than they originally intended.

I like to look at the boxes and visually scan the shelves and see things I might not think to search for on my phone.

Precisely. The store and those products are designed with this exact outcome in mind.

but the dry goods and other stuff that's typically in center of the store could work.

That's why many warehouse stores have home delivery but put a hefty fee on those items. Unless, of course, you spend more than a minimum threshold. It's a narrow margin business so it's hard to reliably make any other type of model work.

kalleboo2• 2 years ago

"Catalog stores" kind of like this do exist, such as Argos in the UK, and Kjell&Co in Sweden. They can stock a huge number of SKUs in a small footprint.

aaronmdjones• 2 years ago

Argos Extra (Retail store) works like this; you walk in, place your order on an electronic machine (or go to customer services with a paper list of product codes), pay (which can be at the machine if you ordered by machine), wait 5-10 minutes, and all of your goods arrive via conveyor belt.

Here's the entire (customer-accessible) part of one such store:

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2H6TX48/interior-of-an-argos-store...

rpeden• 2 years ago

An approach similar to what you suggest used to exist quite widely - at least in my part of Canada. We had Consumers Distributing, which was popular here and in parts of the U.S. You'd go in, find the item you want in a catalog, fill out a paper slip with the items you want, then hand it in and wait for your items to be brought out.

Beer stores in Ontario used to be like that, too. You'd place your order and pay for it, and shortly thereafter, it would come rolling out of the back of the store on a rolling conveyor.

m4632• 2 years ago

I think the last pneumantic tube I saw was decades ago, when banks had drive-throughs.

The lane closest to the bank had a teller, but the other lanes all used pneumantic tubes to send paperwork and money back and forth.

That said, I wonder if pneumatic tubes have been going the way of railroads - extremely useful for their "right-of-ways" to run fiber.

bigstrat2003• 2 years ago

Banks still have drive-throughs, my dude. I've literally never seen a bank without one. And a lot of those still have pneumatic tubes.

ssl-3• 2 years ago

It depends, I think.

From my midwestern US perspective, banks downtown tend not to have drive-throughs, and banks that are in lower-density areas always have drive-throughs.

But then, my perception is clouded by my own bias, wherein: I've spent most of my life in areas with zero public transportation and that generally despise pedestrians.

In areas where people tend to walk, bike, or use public transit instead of owning and driving a car, I can imagine that building a drive-through for a bank has very little utility to the bank or the bank's customers.

seanmcdirmid3• 2 years ago

In Ballard Bank of America has an old drive thru with tubes still in place. But has replaced it all with ATMs that you can use with cars.

majormajor• 2 years ago

This is a very population-density-driven thing. Like Starbucks and being standalone buildings with drivethrus vs just being in strip malls. In cities like LA with significant sections of density but also a ton of surrounding burbs you'll see both; in newer burb-only areas, you almost always have the drive-thru.

stevage3• 2 years ago

I have never seen one in Australia.

Whereas drive through bottle shops (liquor stores) are very common here which seems to sometimes surprise Americans.

mindslight• 2 years ago

My local bank has a pneumatic tube. They have a limit of how much cash they'll send through at one time, a few thousand dollars. If you want more than that they're willing to send it in batches. The only reason I've been able to think of is something involving insurance/liability if the tube gets stuck with the cash in it, perhaps to limit the amount the service tech could possibly lose or steal. I should have asked the old manager about it before she retired, she loved to talk shop.

krzyk2• 2 years ago

Banks still have drive-throughs

Whats the use for those? Creating an account takes long, checkout out monye likewise.

I have trouble understanding what might customer do there. Banks are not fast at doing anything.

jiveturkey2• 2 years ago

I sooooo want this in my house. As well as a solari board.

cypherpunks012• 2 years ago

It is stupidly expensive, but the vestaboard is pretty dang cool for home or small business use, if 132 characters will suffice. No affiliation, I just like em

frompdx• 2 years ago

I think the price is right for a small business that is trying to catch someone's eye. Very unique and more subtle than a LCD display. I could see it in a coffee shop or a tap-room.

I would love a smaller version for my home office. Not sure what I would use it for. Maybe some app monitoring info.

Arrath4• 2 years ago

solari board

TIL what those are called! I've only ever seen them in movies and when going through Frankfurt airport.

jiveturkey2• 2 years ago

there are 2 I know of in the bay area

- ferry building, listing the next ferry and destination etc

- a certain restaurant cum wine bar, listing bottles avail and a count. when you order a bottle the count decrements. so cool.

lostlogin2• 2 years ago

As radiography students we messed around with these. Sending stupid notes or a sub.

It’s a top notch sandwich delivery system.

Not the same but in a similar vein, I was in a big library once and it was having work done. Inside the ceiling were masses of conveyer belts shipping books to various floors and departments.

bloopernova• 2 years ago

I always wanted a hugely impractical 1 metre wide tube for pizza delivery.

Now I wonder if an electromagnetic carriage system in such a tube would work, and if so just how expensive would it be?

Thinking about packet switching in 1 metre tubes is fun too. Almost like designing belts in Factorio. Every house would need an end point, and would you use star network topology?

Beyond pizza, Amazon type deliveries via tube would be great. "Delivered within an hour!"

fracus• 2 years ago

I believe they still use them in Costcos to move money around.

simonw2• 2 years ago

No online discussion of pneumatic tubes is complete without a mention of the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel: https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...

dreamcompiler• 2 years ago

Pretty sure this story is fiction. An America where the best burritos in the country come from San Francisco was what clicked it for me.

mpercy• 2 years ago

I believe it. Denying delicious El Farolito burritos to New Jerseyans would be tantamount to a war crime.

simonw2• 2 years ago

Stanford Hospital has a pneumatic tube system which earned a listing on Atlas Obscura: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pneumatic-tubes-at-stanf...

nubinetwork• 2 years ago

Yeah, I would argue they never went away. At $dayjob we also have a tube system for staff to send samples to the laboratory.

m3kw9• 2 years ago

Costco uses these to transport cash to the main security safe, Costco doesn’t get robbed

fudged71• 2 years ago

Check out the startup Pipedream.

It sounds to me like building logistics pipelines between hospitals (even partnering with the healthcare pneumatic logistics companies to do this) would be an ideal way to get started. Then expand the network from there with QoS packet prioritization schemes. Similar to how large Fiber Optic networks are done in some regions, or how arpanet started.

conductr4• 2 years ago

I used to work in a hospital lab, it's a lot of biohazard stuff being moved around so probably best it stays a closed network. The pipedream idea is great. However I don't get why they focus on food/grocery delivery. I'd want them to replace a majority of delivery trucks of the Fedex/UPS/Amazon variety if I was going to allow them to tunnel a citywide network. Quantifying the reduced wear and tear on city roads may even make it an easier sell to local governments.

nacho-daddy• 2 years ago

The return? more like "The only modern use case for pneumatic tubes is Hospitals."

karlzt• 2 years ago

People in 1920s Berlin nightclubs flirted via pneumatic tubes (2017)

[321 points | 11 months ago | 125 comments]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36854061

082349872349872• 2 years ago

by the 1930s they were using table-top telephones: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39993396

TacticalCoder• 2 years ago

Belgian yearly car MOT: they're still using pneumatic tubes in several places around the country for papers. Saw those being used there in 2023.

tjmc2• 2 years ago

One of my earliest jobs as a mechanical engineer was checking the pneumatic tube shop drawings for Perth Children's Hospital. Basically looking for bends with too small a radius and appropriate collars through firewalls.

One of the engineers suggested adding a transparent loop the loop passing through the public atrium for a bit of fun but predictably this was denied.

wiradikusuma• 2 years ago

Any specific safety reasons?

tjmc2• 2 years ago

No - I think the architects just weren't fans.

justinhj2• 2 years ago

I don’t suppose you have any links to good layman articles about how these work? I am particularly interested in the early systems.

hasmanean• 2 years ago

Does it have to be pneumatic? Electric propulsion would be simpler and not need a tight fit in the tube.

Kon-Peki• 2 years ago

The Niketown stores in NYC and Chicago delivered shoes via pneumatic tube. You’d tell the sales associate the style/size/color, they’d type it into their handheld device, and a few minutes later the shoebox would appear at the nearest (whatever you call it). It was a pretty clever system, but those stores are now closed, from what I understand.

overengineer2• 2 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Internet

jrochkind13• 2 years ago

At my bank you have to talk to tellers only over a video screen, which annoys me. But the pneumatic tubes you use to exchange checks, slips, cash, and other materiel makes up for it, they are so fun to use. (The system is presumably for teller safety)

InitialLastName• 2 years ago

I can think of other reasons to use the tubes:

- At my bank, it lets them operate multiple lanes of drive-through without a teller directly at each lane.

- The failure case of handing valuable, loose slips of paper back and forth from a car window to a building is a whole lot worse than for a bag of fast food.

jrochkind13• 2 years ago

There may be other reasons! But I should have been more clear, in this example it's not a drive-through, it's an inside lobby with human beings standing in a room! Instead of waiting in line to talk to a teller through a window, you wait in line to talk to a video screen with a phone handset and a pneumatic tube.

jejones3141• 2 years ago

Growing up in Moore, Oklahoma in the 1960s and 1970s, my mother frequented the C.R. Anthony's store in the City of Moore Shopping Center. They used pneumatic tubes; the person at the check-out counter would put a receipt and money tendered into a tube and off it would go to somewhere, I figured some office in back, where they made change and sent the tube back. You could hear it rattle around a bit as it went on its way, and the way it would come back, zip out onto a open curved "landing strip" and slam into the stop was impressive.

krzyk2• 2 years ago

Were pneumatic tubes used outside US?

I haven't seen them anywhere except in old US movies.

rekabis• 2 years ago

The carriers are limited to those speeds to maintain specimen integrity. If blood samples move faster, for example, blood cells can be destroyed.

It’s not the overall speed that destroys the blood cells, it is the acceleration and deceleration at either end which does it. These tube systems just don’t have the ability to include extensive gradual-acceleration and gradual-deceleration systems at either end.

The return of pneumatic tubes

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