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"I started writing in the 1930's when I was eighteen years old. And deep inside me I'm still eighteen and it's still 1938."
- Isaac Asimov

Pneumatic Tube Station  
  Passengers are sealed into a narrow cylinder that is shot through a pressurized tube to their destination.  

Mechanically his long legs carried him to the pneumatic tube station, blind instinct directed him to the proper aperture. A car had almost filled; he could barely wedge his broad shoulders into the remaining space. But the crowded discomfort made no impression on him. He did not notice the sealing of the entrance, the hiss of admitted air, the twenty minute flight that took him for the last time to the C Division living area, a hundred miles away.
Technovelgy from Exiles of the Moon, by Nat Schachner (w. AL Zagat).
Published by Wonder Stories in 1931
Additional resources -

Compare to the shorter range bounce tube from Robert Heinlein's 1956 story Double Star. See also the single vehicle tunnel from Foundation (1951) by Isaac Asimov, the submarine tube from An Express of the Future (1895) by Jules Verne, the sub-Atlantic tube from Ralph 124c 41 + (1911) by Hugo Gernsback, the vacutubes from Double Star (1956) by Robert Heinlein and the public tubes from The Houses of Iszm (1954) by Jack Vance.

The concept was originally proposed for freight delivery by George Medhurst, a London businessman in the early nineteenth century. His second proposal in 1812 was for a system that delivered people

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Exiles of the Moon
  More Ideas and Technology by Nat Schachner (w. AL Zagat)
  Tech news articles related to Exiles of the Moon
  Tech news articles related to works by Nat Schachner (w. AL Zagat)

Pneumatic Tube Station-related news articles:
  - Musk Tunnels Wisely Restrict Drivers

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