The Pneumatic Tube On Broadway

Pneumatic Tubes are networks of hollow tubes through which cylindrical containers carrying small items (i.e

. mail) are sent, driven by the force of compressed air, which is usually generated by an engine or water. These tubes can be constructed in any number of ways, using various metals and wood.

A motion has been made in the Legislature for the repeal of the bill authorizing the Beach Pneumatic Transit Company to run an underground tube from the corner of Warren-street and Broadway, beneath Broadway, to within 200 feet of Cedar-street. The bill granting the Company the privilege of prosecuting their work was, it appears, in the form of an amendment to an old bill, and it was thus got through the Legislature without attracting special attention.

Yesterday Mayor Hall had a conference with the Deputy Corporation Counsel in regard to the rights of the City in this matter. The Mayor has some doubts as to whether the Legislature can give a company the right to excavate beneath a street, and thus, in some measure, to place both public and private property in danger. Mr. O'Gorman, the Corporation Counsel, was unable, through sickness, to attend the conference. Should he be of the opinion that the rights of the City Government are being infringed the matter will at once be brought before the Courts.

Something has been said in regard to the caving in of the surface of the east side of Broadway above the Pneumatic tube. There is certainly a flattening of the surface of the Broadway pavement, near Warren-street, but whether this is due to the underground excavations or to the imperfect manner which the pavement was laid is questionable. The Company declare that, as yet, the excavation has barely reached Broadway, and that consequently the caving in of the street is all nonsense.

Although pneumatic tubes in their physical form were not invented until the late 1800s, the idea that pressurized air could be used to propel objects through empty vessels has been explored since antiquity. One of the earliest instances of such research occurred in Ancient Greece, when Hero of Alexandria completed his treatise on pneumatics. Exactly when The Pneumatics (or Pneumatica) of Hero of Alexandria was published is still up for debate, though most scholars agree that he lived in the first century BC. Regardless, Hero of Alexandria's Pneumatica assumed that "air is matter.

The air when set in motion becomes wind, (for wind is nothing else but air in motion)" (Hero of Alexandria 2). He found that "if from the application of force of the particles of air be divided and a vacuum be produced larger than is natural, the particles unite again afterwards; for bodies will have a rapid motion through a vacuum, where there is nothing to obstruct or repel them, until they are in contact" (Hero of Alexandria 3). In other words, air is excessively dense yet its particles are extremely flexible; when it is compressed, it will fall into empty spaces from the pressure exerted upon its particles. This creates a "vacuum" which, as Hero of Alexandria explores in his book, can put objects and machines in motion by the force of air.

While none of the nineteenth-century patents or articles dealing with pneumatic tubes cite Hero of Alexandria's treatise, one can infer that his research informed the workings of this dead medium over one thousand years later. In a way, the pneumatic tube is a remediation of Hero of Alexandria's early pneumatic devices. But even though we can trace pneumatics into antiquity, the actual "invention" of the pneumatic tube has a history that is complicated and confusing. The pneumatic tube's invention cannot be traced back to a sole "inventor," but rather a baffling hodge-podge of patents and improvements. This surge of innovation speaks to the moment of mass invention and production associated with the late 1800s and the Industrial Revolution; there are literally hundreds of patents involving pneumatic tubes between 1870 and 1900 alone.

by: Emma

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