9 ms·

The return of pneumatic tubes

142 points by pseudolus 2y ago

krzyk 2y ago
Were pneumatic tubes used outside US? I haven't seen them anywhere except in old US movies.
rekabis 2y 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.
jauntywundrkind 2y 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 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-first-underground-autonomous-robot-delivery-system-fulfills-orders 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.
- Animats 2y 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.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ianburrell 2y 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.
  - overengineer 2y ago
    I want them with gopros livestreaming
  - kalleboo 2y ago
    You had the Mail Rail back in 1927 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Post_Office_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Post_Office_Railway Edit: and before that the Chicago tunnels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company
- YurgenJurgensen 2y 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 2y 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.
- metabagel 2y ago
  Still doesn't beat the transfer speed of a jumbo jet full of data tapes.
  - mikewarot 2y ago
    How about the Emma Marsk loaded with SSD drives?
    - lostlogin 2y ago
      As long as the driver doesn’t jam it in the Suez, Ever Given style.
      - Arrath 2y ago
        Careful, or the networking protocol might jam ever smaller boats in behind it.
    - petra 2y ago
      It might have higher bandwith than the total bandwith of the internet.
    - ClassyJacket 2y ago
      What if we special built a space vehicle to hold as many MicroSD-style flash memory chips as we could and blast it off at Voyager speeds?
      - mikewarot 2y ago
        Nope.... SSDs aren't going to retain data for decades, especially with all of the radiation spewing around outside the protection of mother Earth. The gold record will last way, way longer, as it's low density data, thus fairly redundant, and you could work around any micrometeorite holes.
BenFranklin100 2y 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.
- KerrAvon 2y ago
  That sounds both less efficient and possibly actively dangerous in any reasonably large facility. It will certainly be slower than tube delivery.
  - BenFranklin100 2y ago
    High upfront capital costs for tube infrastructure and relative inflexibility once set up might dominate the decision.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Detrytus 2y ago
      Robots aren't cheap either. And the safety concerns, or maybe even the nuisance of having those robots roaming the hallways, adding to the traffic might trump everything else.
      - BenFranklin100 2y ago
        A tube system is cheaper than I thought, about $300-500K for a big hospital system: https://www.aerocom.co.uk/blog/how-much-does-a-pneumatic-tube-system-cost/ https://www.aerocom.co.uk/blog/how-much-does-a-pneumatic-tub... I don’t know if this takes into consideration facilities remodeling.
- gagagaga7 2y 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.
hnbear 2y 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-island-s-pneumatic-trash 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 2y 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
  - hnbear 2y 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.
ortusdux 2y 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6xJ4K7WSQw
- KerrAvon 2y 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.
  - metabagel 2y 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.
    - jonathanlydall 2y ago
      My parents still live in the house I grew up in which has a central vacuum cleaner. Theirs is a “Beam” system. Each outlet has a copper pair of wires running to it, connected to two contact pins on the inside of the outlet, and the vacuum hose has a metal ring on it so that as it’s inserted, it completes an electrical circuit between the two contact pins, signalling the vacuum cleaner turn on, once the circuit is broken, it would turn off. Perhaps the system you had actually worked like this.
      - ortusdux 2y ago
        The contacts can also deliver 12v power which can be used to run powered brush heads.
smusamashah 2y 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 2y 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-new-york-city/ 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-new-york-city/id1543822668?i=1000627735161 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pneumatic-tube-mail-in...
- cypherpunks01 2y 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 2y 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.
- conductr 2y 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.
  - aaronmdjones 2y 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-2H6TX48.jpg https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2H6TX48/interior-of-an-argos-store...
m463 2y 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 2y 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.
  - krzyk 2y 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.
  - ssl-3 2y 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.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y 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 2y 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.
jiveturkey 2y ago
I sooooo want this in my house. As well as a solari board.
- cypherpunks01 2y 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 2y 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.
    - NoboruWataya 2y ago
      Building one sounds like a pretty fun project!
    - GuB-42 2y ago
      > trying to catch someone's eye And ear. These things are loud. It is actually a feature in airports and train stations, as it signals that the board is updating and it is worth taking a look, in case there is a delay or something. But if you don't want a loud notification, these things may get old very quickly.
- Arrath 2y ago
  > solari board TIL what those are called! I've only ever seen them in movies and when going through Frankfurt airport.
  - jiveturkey 2y 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.
lostlogin 2y 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 2y 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 2y ago
I believe they still use them in Costcos to move money around.
simonw 2y 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_tunnel.htm https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...
- dreamcompiler 2y 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 2y ago
    I believe it. Denying delicious El Farolito burritos to New Jerseyans would be tantamount to a war crime.
simonw 2y ago
Stanford Hospital has a pneumatic tube system which earned a listing on Atlas Obscura: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pneumatic-tubes-at-stanford-hospital https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pneumatic-tubes-at-stanf...
- nubinetwork 2y 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 2y ago
Costco uses these to transport cash to the main security safe, Costco doesn’t get robbed
fudged71 2y 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.
- conductr 2y 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 2y ago
The return? more like "The only modern use case for pneumatic tubes is Hospitals."
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
karlzt 2y 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36854061
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  by the 1930s they were using table-top telephones: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39993396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39993396
TacticalCoder 2y 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.
tjmc 2y 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.
- justinhj 2y 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.
- wiradikusuma 2y ago
  Any specific safety reasons?
  - tjmc 2y ago
    No - I think the architects just weren't fans.
hasmanean 2y ago
Does it have to be pneumatic? Electric propulsion would be simpler and not need a tight fit in the tube.
Kon-Peki 2y 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.
overengineer 2y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Internet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Internet
jrochkind1 2y 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 2y 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.
  - jrochkind1 2y 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.
    - justinhj 2y ago
      Seems a bit dystopian
      - jrochkind1 2y ago
        Agreed. But at least I get to play with pneumatic tubes. Hey, come to think of it, dystopian pneumatic tube world is the movie Brazil https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/
jejones3141 2y 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.

142 points by pseudolus 2y ago

Were pneumatic tubes used outside US? I haven't seen them anywhere except in old US movies.

> 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.

jauntywundrkind 2y 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 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-first-underground-autonomous-robot-delivery-system-fulfills-orders 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.

Animats 2y 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.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ianburrell 2y 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.
- overengineer 2y ago
  I want them with gopros livestreaming
- kalleboo 2y ago
  You had the Mail Rail back in 1927 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Post_Office_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Post_Office_Railway Edit: and before that the Chicago tunnels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company
YurgenJurgensen 2y 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 2y 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.

metabagel 2y ago
Still doesn't beat the transfer speed of a jumbo jet full of data tapes.
- mikewarot 2y ago
  How about the Emma Marsk loaded with SSD drives?
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    As long as the driver doesn’t jam it in the Suez, Ever Given style.
    - Arrath 2y ago
      Careful, or the networking protocol might jam ever smaller boats in behind it.
  - petra 2y ago
    It might have higher bandwith than the total bandwith of the internet.
  - ClassyJacket 2y ago
    What if we special built a space vehicle to hold as many MicroSD-style flash memory chips as we could and blast it off at Voyager speeds?
    - mikewarot 2y ago
      Nope.... SSDs aren't going to retain data for decades, especially with all of the radiation spewing around outside the protection of mother Earth. The gold record will last way, way longer, as it's low density data, thus fairly redundant, and you could work around any micrometeorite holes.

BenFranklin100 2y 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.

KerrAvon 2y ago
That sounds both less efficient and possibly actively dangerous in any reasonably large facility. It will certainly be slower than tube delivery.
- BenFranklin100 2y ago
  High upfront capital costs for tube infrastructure and relative inflexibility once set up might dominate the decision.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Detrytus 2y ago
    Robots aren't cheap either. And the safety concerns, or maybe even the nuisance of having those robots roaming the hallways, adding to the traffic might trump everything else.
    - BenFranklin100 2y ago
      A tube system is cheaper than I thought, about $300-500K for a big hospital system: https://www.aerocom.co.uk/blog/how-much-does-a-pneumatic-tube-system-cost/ https://www.aerocom.co.uk/blog/how-much-does-a-pneumatic-tub... I don’t know if this takes into consideration facilities remodeling.
gagagaga7 2y 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.

hnbear 2y 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-island-s-pneumatic-trash 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 2y 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
- hnbear 2y 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.

ortusdux 2y 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6xJ4K7WSQw

KerrAvon 2y 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.
- metabagel 2y 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.
  - jonathanlydall 2y ago
    My parents still live in the house I grew up in which has a central vacuum cleaner. Theirs is a “Beam” system. Each outlet has a copper pair of wires running to it, connected to two contact pins on the inside of the outlet, and the vacuum hose has a metal ring on it so that as it’s inserted, it completes an electrical circuit between the two contact pins, signalling the vacuum cleaner turn on, once the circuit is broken, it would turn off. Perhaps the system you had actually worked like this.
    - ortusdux 2y ago
      The contacts can also deliver 12v power which can be used to run powered brush heads.

smusamashah 2y 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 2y 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-new-york-city/ 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-new-york-city/id1543822668?i=1000627735161 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pneumatic-tube-mail-in...

cypherpunks01 2y 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 2y 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.

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

m463 2y 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 2y 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.
- krzyk 2y 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.
- ssl-3 2y 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.
- seanmcdirmid 2y 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 2y 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.

jiveturkey 2y ago

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

cypherpunks01 2y 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 2y 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.
  - NoboruWataya 2y ago
    Building one sounds like a pretty fun project!
  - GuB-42 2y ago
    > trying to catch someone's eye And ear. These things are loud. It is actually a feature in airports and train stations, as it signals that the board is updating and it is worth taking a look, in case there is a delay or something. But if you don't want a loud notification, these things may get old very quickly.
Arrath 2y ago
> solari board TIL what those are called! I've only ever seen them in movies and when going through Frankfurt airport.
- jiveturkey 2y 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.

lostlogin 2y 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 2y 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 2y ago

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

simonw 2y 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_tunnel.htm https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...

dreamcompiler 2y 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 2y ago
  I believe it. Denying delicious El Farolito burritos to New Jerseyans would be tantamount to a war crime.

simonw 2y ago

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

nubinetwork 2y 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 2y ago

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

fudged71 2y 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.

conductr 2y 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 2y ago

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

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

karlzt 2y 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36854061

082349872349872 2y ago
by the 1930s they were using table-top telephones: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39993396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39993396

TacticalCoder 2y 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.

tjmc 2y 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.

justinhj 2y 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.
wiradikusuma 2y ago
Any specific safety reasons?
- tjmc 2y ago
  No - I think the architects just weren't fans.

hasmanean 2y ago

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

Kon-Peki 2y 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.

overengineer 2y ago

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

jrochkind1 2y 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 2y 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.
- jrochkind1 2y 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.
  - justinhj 2y ago
    Seems a bit dystopian
    - jrochkind1 2y ago
      Agreed. But at least I get to play with pneumatic tubes. Hey, come to think of it, dystopian pneumatic tube world is the movie Brazil https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/

jejones3141 2y 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.