Over the past few decades, bank drive-through windows have all but disappeared in favor of ATMs and online accounts. This is bad for companies that sell pneumatic tubes, or canisters that are sucked into a window by air pressure. But once upon a time, pneumatic tubes were very important.
“The golden age of pneumatic tubing was the late 19th century and early 20th century,” said Holly Kruse, a communications professor at Rogers State University in Oklahoma who studies the outdated technology. At the time, major cities like New York, Philadelphia and Washington had miles of underground pneumatic pipes, she said. These systems were “a way to quickly transfer both postal and telegraphic messages in urban areas, bypassing the slow traffic of the roads.”
In 1900, Postmaster General Charles Emory Smith said he would not be surprised if “the pneumatic pipe system spread into every household.” Sadly, modern improvements such as telephones and highways have obliterated that idea. However, the tube is still used in hospitals to transport medicines and specimens. And in recent years, another industry, cannabis dispensaries, has seen a surge in sales.
“There's always some physical product that needs to be transported, and that's what pneumatic tubing is for,” says Matthew Kelly, a sales representative for Kelly Systems, a family company that has been in the pneumatic tubing business since 1904. This system is becoming common in cannabis dispensaries.
“Moving products from storage to the retail floor is a very controlled and tightly controlled system within a pharmacy, and either someone does it or it is a system that cannot be disrupted or tampered with like this. ,” Kelly said. .
Plus, pneumatic tubes are kind of fun. Scott Rudder recently opened a cannabis dispensary called Township Green in an old bank in Riverside, New Jersey. He updated his system with pneumatic tubes so customers can retrieve pot without getting out of their cars. They order online ahead of time, pull up to the drive-thru, send their ID through a tube to a cashier, and the cashier ships the cannabis back to them.
“It's totally cool,” Rudder said. “Our life was all about cash and checks, sitting in the backseat of our mom's car, and then as we grew up, all of a sudden, it turned into marijuana.”
Rudder said he did not expect pneumatic tubes to be used in 2024. So is this the beginning of a second golden age? Probably not, but we don't know because the subways are still underground in many cities. However, please be careful. According to the National Postal Museum, the exact location of Washington, D.C.'s subway system is classified.
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