The Pneumatic Dispatch, with Illustrations. A Compilation of Notices and Information concerting the Pneumatic System of Transportation as now Building and Operating in England; together with Accounts of its first Trial in the United States, and of Proposed Applications of the System to Passenger and Postal Service: Including Descriptions of Sub-Aqueous and other Tunnels.

Alfred E. Beach

Published by The American News Company, 1868

About this Item

Full cloth binding with gilt lettering to front board and spine, brown clay-coated endpapers, plate and in-text illustrations including two folding plates, 9-5/8" x 6", 86 pp. Very good condition, minor crease to front board, owner's name to front endpaper. First engineered in 1799, the pneumatic tube became a practical system for transporting small packages along dedicated lines. We know them today largely for their use in banks & hospitals, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were significant installations for postal service, as well as stock exchanges and more specialized uses, including one from the Aberdeen fish market to the nearest post office. At the 1867 American Institute Fair, Alfred Beach demonstrated his prototype for moving a dozen people through a tunnel. In 1869, he secretly constructed a 312-foot pneumatic subway tunnel under Broadway. Alas! Boss Tweed was personally invested in the competing elevated line, and refused to allow the pneumatic line to expand, and after operating for three years, it closed in 1873. Beach's 1868 (the year after the Fair exhibit, and before the problems with Boss Tweed began) book is both a history of the successes of pneumatic tubes, as well as an optimistic view of their future. It features wonderful illustrations, including fold-outs of pneumatic tubes real and imagined. An important and scarce book of engineering history.

Seller Inventory # 002555

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Pneumatic Dispatch, with Illustrations. A Compilation of Notices and Information concerting the Pneumatic System of Transportation as now Building and Operating in England; together with Accounts of its first Trial in the United States, and of Proposed Applications of the System to Passenger and Postal Service: Including Descriptions of Sub-Aqueous and other Tunnels.
• Publisher: The American News Company
• Publication Date: 1868
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Science & Technology