Pneumatic!

March 2, 2005 1:27 PM

“A TUBE, A CAR, A REVOLVING FAN!” In 1870 the first subway in New York was built using a huge pneumatic tube. Alfred Beach was the inventor. The first link is to a whole book about the process, this link is to the section of nycsubway.org about Beach and his invention. And you thought pneumatic tubes were just for 1940s office fun!
posted by OmieWise (11 comments total)

Wow! I've seen pictures of Beach's subway on the ubiquitous wallpaper of Subway sandwich shops but I always thought that it was something from 19th century science fiction. It never crossed my mind that someone actually built a prototype.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:37 PM on March 2, 2005

75mph in 1845? holy cats, Batman! does the London tube run at those speeds today?
posted by killy willy at 2:07 PM on March 2, 2005

If you find this sort of thing interesting, Alfred Beach is actually one of the people that Paul Collin's discusses at length in his excellent book Banvard's Folly. In the book, Collin's basically chronicles the lives, inventions (misguided or not), and fate of those who all came up with something they thought was groundbreaking, but didn't end up going much of anywhere for various reasons.

I've personally always hoped that the pneumatic tube idea could be scaled up just slightly to provide for faster single (or two) person cross-country travel, but perhaps that's just due to me wanting to sit in one of those little tubes while it whooshes away.
posted by almostcool at 2:10 PM on March 2, 2005

Good post, Omie!
posted by kimota at 2:13 PM on March 2, 2005

A similar length of track (and conspicuous lack of success) was the Bennie Railplane near Glasgow, which was an overhead monorail with twin propellers.
posted by scruss at 2:27 PM on March 2, 2005

The obscure canadian rock band Klaatu (once believed to be the beatles in disguise) wrote a song about Mr. Beach and his subway. It's pretty good 70's pop rock. I wrote a bit about it and included an MP3 here. The lyrics are here. A sample:

Back in 1870 just beneath the Great White Way / Alfred Beach worked secretly / Risking all to ride a dream / His wind-machine / His wind-machine

New York City and the morning sun / Were awoken by the strangest sound / Reportedly as far as Washington / The tremors shook the earth as Alfie / Blew underground

posted by adamkempa at 2:27 PM on March 2, 2005

Just yesterday, another FPP detailed how others are using similar technology today.
posted by Keith Talent at 2:37 PM on March 2, 2005

We need to get the scientists working on the tube technology chop chop.
posted by Hildago at 2:53 PM on March 2, 2005

This is so damn cool. I can't believe that much of it was done without asking permission and in secret. I'll second almostcool's recommendation of Banvard's Folly for very detailed stories of several mostly forgotten inventors and oddballs. And I also assumed that that Subway Sandwich wallpaper was some sort of sci-fi clipart until I read about it in the book.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 3:01 PM on March 2, 2005

I'd love to see pneumatic tubes used for transportation these days. There's a sort of Delightfully Mad Victorian Scientist connotation to the word.
posted by cmyk at 4:04 PM on March 2, 2005

I can't believe that much of it was done without asking permission and in secret.

A lot of infrastructure things in the 19th century were done that way, actually. The Chicago Tunnel Company built its narrow-gauge freight network, which covered the entire Loop and then some, largely without permission from the landowners above. When the company failed, this left the network's ownership and maintenance in limbo, which led to the Chicago Flood. And when the Northwestern Elevated Railroad -- today the north branch of the CTA -- wanted to build an extension from Evanston into Wilmette, they did it in the dead of night.

I'd love to see pneumatic tubes used for transportation these days.

The Pneumatic Transportation gallery at Futuristics has drawings of a proposed system to supplement BART, from 1967. And Capsule Pipelines has some proposals.
posted by dhartung at 10:08 PM on March 2, 2005