My Pneumatic Tube Museum
A study in mail and technology: New York's pneumatic tube postal system, 1897-1953, which moved mail underneath the city with suction in pipes; its demise and replacement with modern mail trucks; pneumatic systems for human transit, like the Beach subway, 1870; science fiction and conspiracy theories
Arlinghaus, Sandra Lach. Down the mail tubes: the pressured postal era, 1853-1984. Ann Arbor: Institute of Mathematical Geography, 1985.
“Excerpts from the testimony before the Joint commission to investigate the postal service ... also, report of the commission relative to pneumatic-tube service, submitted to Congress January 14, 1901.” United States Commission to Investigate the Postal Service. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1917.
Fuller, Wayne E. Morality and the mail in nineteenth-century America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
As the origin of the term “memory hole”:
"In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building." Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Rosetta Books, 2000.
-Emily Segal
3 comments:
Some kind of visual reference to Terry Gilliam's Brazil, with pneumatic tubes used as shorthand for inefficient and crumbling bureaucracy, basically, might be interesting. Also, you could think of the vacuum cupping massage thing as a kind of abridged pneumatic tube.
http://www.woodtigermassage.com/cupping.html
I think this museum is fascinating. And, to dovetail with the Terry Gilliam and your own George Orwell reference, why not some Aldous Huxley?
"Every one says I'm awfully pneumatic," said Lenina reflectively, patting her own legs.
Huxley, Aldous. 'Brave New World.' New York: Bantam Books, 1968.
The usage of 'pneumatic' has always been a striking, troubling part of the book for me.
(oops! the above was from Ryan)
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