A Love Letter to the Lost World of the Parisian Pneumatic Post
www.messynessychic.com
Pneumatic post, 1947 © Alamy Years before the Paris Métro opened, there was another subterranean transport system rattling away beneath the city streets. Instead of messages floating around in the internet ether of apps and social networks, if you wanted to send a note to someone in your city in

I was reading A Coffin for Dimitrios (great book), and found a character saying “send me a pneumatique when you get to Paris.” And in fact, there was a series of pneumatic tubes to speed the mail in Paris for over 100 years. Thought it was cool. Here’s the wiki as well.

      • @[email protected]English
        13•10 hours ago

        Pneumatic transit and atmospheric rail were kinda a fad in the 1800s. Even if it had been built it would have mainly been an attraction rather than a mode of transport. They were never really able to hammer out the kinks with maintenance and safety.

        Funnily enough an atmospheric rail incident on the Dalkey atmospheric railway was more than likely the first time a human sustained a land speed over 100mph.

        The son of the owner accidentally loosed the break on a single carriage that was supposed to convey a whole train and accidentally shot himself off alone, covering about 2 miles of track in less than 75 sec. Which in the 1840’s would have been like engaging a Victorian warp drive.

          • @[email protected]English
            6•9 hours ago

            Oh yeah, the people mover is really cool. Always been a goal to actually ride it if I ever make it down to Brazil.

            It’s a little bit easier to make them work nowadays with modern materials, rubber is probably a little more pleasant of a sealing material to work with compared to the og bearskin and lard.

            Though one of the benefits of the lard is that the og one always smelled like a fry up when in use.

              • @[email protected]English
                1•1 hour ago

                In 1824, a man called Vallance took out a patent and built a short demonstration line; his system consisted of a 6-foot (1.8 m) diameter cast-iron tube with rails cast in to the lower part; the vehicle was the full size of the tube, and bear skin was used to seal the annular space.

                Back in the days before vulcanized rubber and plastics if you wanted to make a somewhat air tight seal you had to soak an animal skin in fat. With the amount of pressure you need to move a train, you need a pretty big and durable animal skin.