Pneumatic Post SystemAn increased number of express messages between business, financial and legal offices and bank in big cities as well as the busy street traffic necessitated new methods of telegram and letter transportation.
Many European and American cities therefore set up underground mail tubes that connected select postal and telegraph offices with each other. Small metal cartridges with telegrams and letters were transported by pneumatic pressure. Therefore messages could be conveyed speedly and independently of the growing road traffic.
The Viennese Pneumatic Post SystemInstalled in 1875, the Viennese tube network first comprised about ten stations and spanned 14 kilometers. By 1913, the number of stations and the length of the network had grown up to 82 kilometers.
Most of the letters were sent via the central telegraph office on Börseplatz, and from there, further to intermediary stations every ten to twenty minutes.
This network was also equipped with ist own postcards, stamps and mailboxes and thus incorporated into the municipal postal system. At railway stations, tube offices connected the municipal postal system with the railroad.
The Vienna pneumatic post system was damaged only slightly during World War 1, but the entire system was destroyed during World War 2. It was re-built but electrical telecommunications became too strong a competitor and the pneumatic mail service was discontinued in 1956.
Pneumatic Post Systems in other Cities
To combat traffic congestion in busy metropolian cities, postal administrations in London, Berlin, Paris, Prague and the USA developed their own transport systems in the late 19th century.
The first pneumatic post system was installed in London in 1853 linking the London Stock Exchange to the city’s main telegraph station.In 1874 the first French system with ca. 467 kilometers in total length was opened in Paris and in operation until 1984.
Berlin’s pneumatic post system began in 1865 and closed in 1976. It was a gigantic pneumatic post system 400 kilometres in total length at its maximum extent. In 1898 alone more than 2.3 million mail items passed through the tubes.
The first American pneumatic post systems were introduced in Philadelphia, in 1893. Boston, Brooklyn, New York, Chicago and St Louis also installed pneumatic systems. By 1915, these six cities had in total more than 56 miles of tubes in use.
The Prague pneumatic post is the world’s last preserved municipal pneumatic post system. It opened for public use on 4th March 1889. Up to 2002 the Prague system handled about 9,000 transmissions per month, down from more than a million per month in its heyday in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Pneumatic Post Systems were also found in other cities: Munich, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Hamburg, Rome, Naples, Milan, Marseilles and Melbourne.
Further Information:
Download: Pneumatic Post System (English)
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