4 ms·

Reminds me of a tape storage robot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiNWOhl00Ao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiNWOhl00Ao

dredmorbius 4y ago
That's not unlike how the US Library of Congress operated, at least conceptually. From the 1897 Librarian's Report to Congress, following completion of the present Jefferson Library building, adjacent to the Capitol: As a part of the present system, there is a pneumatic tube, a tunnel, and eletric machinery for the transmission of books from the Library to the Capitol. It would be impossible to overestimate the importance of this ingeniuous work in the practical efficiency of Library administration. A test was made of its operations on October 27 [1897] by the Library officials. The telephone was not yet in operation, and therefore the experiment was under imperfect conditions. Without any prearrangement or forewarning, a request for boosk was conveyed through the pneumatic tube from the capitaol to the reading desk in the new library. In ten minutes and five seconds the volume asked for reached the Capitol. The second request was for four books --- one in English, the other three in Italian, German, and French, respectively. Three of them, the Italian, German, and English, came within eight minutes and eleven seconds. The French Volume, Les Châtiments, arrived two minutes later.... The test was notable as demonstrating the practical convenience of the Library in the service of Congress and the Supreme Court. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924112523760&view=1up&seq=13&skin=2021&size=125 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924112523760&vi... Note that the Supreme Court at the time met in the Capitol (in the Old Senate Chambers). The expanded library was a huge improvement over the old quarters (immediately west of the Supreme Court, in the Capitol itself), where 800,000 books were housed in a space designed for 200,000, and in which haphazard stacking and poor cataloguing greatly hindered access. The expanded library was the life work of the previous Librarian, Ainsworth Rand Spofford, whose vision largely shapes the Library as it exists today.

dredmorbius 4y ago

That's not unlike how the US Library of Congress operated, at least conceptually. From the 1897 Librarian's Report to Congress, following completion of the present Jefferson Library building, adjacent to the Capitol: As a part of the present system, there is a pneumatic tube, a tunnel, and eletric machinery for the transmission of books from the Library to the Capitol. It would be impossible to overestimate the importance of this ingeniuous work in the practical efficiency of Library administration. A test was made of its operations on October 27 [1897] by the Library officials. The telephone was not yet in operation, and therefore the experiment was under imperfect conditions. Without any prearrangement or forewarning, a request for boosk was conveyed through the pneumatic tube from the capitaol to the reading desk in the new library. In ten minutes and five seconds the volume asked for reached the Capitol. The second request was for four books --- one in English, the other three in Italian, German, and French, respectively. Three of them, the Italian, German, and English, came within eight minutes and eleven seconds. The French Volume, Les Châtiments, arrived two minutes later.... The test was notable as demonstrating the practical convenience of the Library in the service of Congress and the Supreme Court. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924112523760&view=1up&seq=13&skin=2021&size=125 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924112523760&vi... Note that the Supreme Court at the time met in the Capitol (in the Old Senate Chambers). The expanded library was a huge improvement over the old quarters (immediately west of the Supreme Court, in the Capitol itself), where 800,000 books were housed in a space designed for 200,000, and in which haphazard stacking and poor cataloguing greatly hindered access. The expanded library was the life work of the previous Librarian, Ainsworth Rand Spofford, whose vision largely shapes the Library as it exists today.