Whoosh-Clunk
When you bought something, the clerk would take your money and write out a note of the purchase. They would then pack it into a brass cylinder about 3-4 inches in diameter and about 8 inches long and stuff the cylinder into a capped pipe. There was a sort clunk-whoosh noise, which I loved, and then after a short pause, a whoosh-thud, and the clerk opened the pipe and there was the cylinder with your receipt and change in it. I can tell you that to an inquisitive eight year old, this was the very definition of real, functioning, magic! Which is all by way of an introduction to telling you that pneumatic tubes are back! Not this time in shops, more's the pity, but in some hospitals where they are used to move samples and medicines between departments. It's a fabulous idea, and I can imagine that it saves an enormous amount of walking and time on the part of the hospital staff. Sadly, though, the cylinders (plastic, not brass) now just arrive with a swoosh, no thud-clunk. It seems that clunking damages the contents, so the engineers figured out how slow the speed on arrival! Elsewhere in the network, the carriers (about a foot long in this case) can travel at up to 18 mph. That's quite a lot faster than walking, and much less effort. It also means that the surgeons can get blood samples to the lab (they have a direct connection in some hospitals) and results back in time to use the information. I think it's an amazing new use of what was cutting edge technology in the 19th century. A classic example of thinking out of the box!
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