could someone please put a high speed camera into one of these suckers?

We had tubes at UCSF. They were great. Until the day the rat squeezed out of one.

Pathogen-laden specimen vials rushing through miles and miles of tubing that were last cleaned in 1906. What could go wrong?

All well and good until the shit hits the fan

My own samples ran through these tubes. I've seen them in other hospitals as well, and they save immense amounts of time and interns running around with carts and trays.

They're very, very cool, and they remind me of the old pneumatic systems they used to use in the drive thru windows in banks. The teller used to send through lollipops along with the deposit reciepts :)

Ohio State University Medical Center, where I work, currently has two parallel systems of tubes. The old ones look like bank tubes and the new ones look like these.

We also have multiple kinds of robots and awesome computers. And wireless internet in all the waiting areas.

We have robot proctological surgeon assist devices. I'd love to show you pictures, it makes the surgeon look like he has his head up a giant posterior when he's using the robot assist. Tank Commander arcade style.

I love my workplace.

jennchlebus,

Pics!

There used to be a pneumatic tube system for transporting books between the building of the library of congress. They were larg, oval tubes.

Very Jetsons,
They should make giant pneumatic tubes so that people could step out of their housess and ride to work.

I'll make that #14 on my list of things to do today.

Jenn,

You live just down the street. Cool. As an architect who's done some hospital work I've had to lay out these pneumatic systems before. Any decently sized hospital has a huge network of them. The only thing to remember is sound insulation. When those things stop at a station they are LOUD.

-Pope Impious XXIII

they still have those bank tubes! I still get my lollipops that way!

This is neat and all - but is a century-old technology for the transmission of medical information something Stanford should actually advertise? How many lives have been lost to these documents not having been digitized and instantly available and searchable at ALL 124 stations? Don't mean to be a stick in the mud - but a bit cause of our failing health care system is the medical community still doing everything on paper. Sounds like jennchlebus' and some hospitals are getting with the times. But they're the exception.

Pneumatic people tubes are pretty high on the list of things we here in The Future are supposed to have but don't. Still below flying cars and sex robots.

OSU Medical Center is pretty incredible. Nothing about OSU is small, but the Medical Center takes the cake. They're spending a billion (with a B) dollars expanding it, starting this year. Yikes.

A close friend in Denver is the lead engineer on these systems for Swisslog.. the parent company that owns most of these pneumatic tube systems companies. Most of the Bank systems we see have also been absorbed/bought out by Swisslog..

they have a really nice test lab including the tubes and all of the embedded electronic systems that run these transport systems..

Swisslog also has an older track system that they still maintain for existing customers.. the track system is interesting in that the item your carrying stays upright , even when the track and train style carrier are vertical or upside down...
Imagine not spilling a glass of water and your get the picture..

notes on what I saw when touring Swisslog and their historical wall depicting the developement of these tube systems and their uses going back to 1806!

Lockheed engineer L.K. Edwards founded Tube Transit, Inc. to develop technology based on "gravity-vacuum transportation". In 1967 he proposed a Bay Area Gravity-Vacuum Transit for California that would run alongside the then-under construction BART system. It was never built.

Here are two good links.. the first showing the human transport system mentioned above:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pneumatic_Dispatch_-_Figure_7.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube

In The Netherlands, many supermarkets et cetera use pneumatic pipes to send money right into the vault.

I don't know what brand is used in other countries, if any, but a major Dutch manufacturer has some info at http://www.lamsonair.nl/en/air/airbox.php

I'd like to point out that Usain Bolt can achieve peak speeds of nearly 30 miles per hour and about 22 MPH is his average - however, that's not sustained over a quarter of a mile so the tubes still beat him.

Can we call this system the intertubes, or would that only apply if it linked to another university?

On a related note: the Library of Congress has a wonderful Rube Goldberg book transportation system and an associated book request slip pneumatic tube system. I'd love to see the insides of those. The larger book one snakes all over the roof of the underground tunnel that goes across the street to the building where you get your LOC library cards and makes wonderful noises.

Yeah, I've seen them here in Finland too.

These are what the internets look like up close

A co-worker went to the bank drive through teller to withdraw a small amount of money. They accidentally sent him a couple of thousand dollars meant for a different drive through lane. He told them about the mix up and the alarmed teller said to put the money back in the tube. He did so, but forgot to use the shuttle! Suddenly, 100 twenties flew out of the tube in the bank and all over the floor! Tellers were running around like crazy trying to pick them up. The manager asked him to park and come inside for a chat.

Every bank in the US has these in the drive-up lanes. Sure, they did some intricate threading of tubes, but... Is is still just tubes. A series of tubes!

Nothing really new here, many shops in the UK had them for every department, some still have them, its at least a 100 year old system....
Look here for a video:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsDq14yRtW0
Here is the history from the 19 century onwards:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube
No need to go crazy Guys, nothing really new here....