“We live in the speed. Anything that accelerates things increases our happiness. “This phrase could have been said by any current politician, but Senator Chaunley M. depended when inaugurating by pneumatic pipes in New York on October 7, 1897.
At the end of the 19th century, the New York city experienced vertigo growth, so the Manhattan Post Office found the problem of delivering the mail with enough speed in a city that grew faster than its own streets. To try to solve it, they decided to create An underground network of compressed air pipesas reported by the medium.
In the first line, of just over a kilometer, A bible wrapped in an American flag was sent and a copy of the United States Constitution. Back came a bouquets of violets. The pipe network quickly expanded with the inclusion of new lines that went to West Harlem to the west and the East Harlem east.
These were excavated at approximately one meter deep under the sidewalks and the time that the capsules were traveling from the main post office at the southern end of Manhattan to Harlem was about 20 minutes. In addition, it also built a transverse line through Manhattan, in which the capsules could be launched in four minutes.
Two other lines also toured the Brooklyn bridge from bass Manhattan to the main post office on the Brooklyn side. In total, The network had 43 kilometers of pipes that connected 23 post offices. In the receiving offices, the mail was classified and delivered by a traditional postman.
This system came to transport about 95.00 shipments per day, approximately 30% of all mail delivered in New York, and in each capsule there were about 600 cards. But to measures that the carriages thrown by horses disappeared and the cars acquired more popularity, the pneumatic mail ceased to be competitive and ended up disappearing just over half a century later. In 1953 it closed by reforms and never used again.
