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"I feel like I've been very fortunate in that I've stuck like a burr to the dog-leg of the next generation of nerdism. I've been carried into the XXIth century on Bill Gates' pants-cuff."
- William Gibson
 |
| Vacuum Cylinder | ||
| Traveling first class, but like mail, in a tube system. |
This might be a good description of what it will be like to travel in the Hyperloop, if they ever build one.
| We've got to get into his office secretly, by
tte vacuum cylinders. We're to
meet a man from his office at the
Eighth Postal switch-station."
The girls were both in gray, with long dark capes. We took the public monorail down into the mid-Manhattan section under the city roof of the business district, and into the Eighth Postal switch-station where the sleek bronze cylinders came tumbling out of the vacuum portes to be rerouted and dispatched again, A man was on the lookout for us. "Daniel Dean and party?" "Yes," said Snap. "We were ordered here..." We were put into one of the oversize mail cylinders, routed through the tubes like sacks of recorded letters; and in ten minutes, with a thump that knocked the breath from all of us, we were in the switch-rack of Halsey's outer office. |
| Technovelgy from Wandl, The Invader,
by Ray Cummings. Published by Astounding Stories in 1932 Additional resources -
|
A bit more:
The cylinder-slide opened.
Compare to the submarine tube from An Express of the Future (1895) by Michel Verne, the
sub-Atlantic tunnel from Ralph 124c 41 + (1911) by Hugo Gernsback, the
air tunnel from Through the Air Tunnel (19129) by Harl Vincent, the
pneumatic tube station from Exiles of the Moon (1931) by Nat Schachner (w. AL Zagat), the
pneumatic-tube zone from Mechanocracy (1932) by Miles J. Breuer, the
vortal tube from Whipping Star (1969) by Frank Herbert, the
public vehicle tube from The Houses of Iszm (1954) by Jack Vance, the
vacutubes from Double Star (1956) by Robert Heinlein and the
bounce tube from Double Star (1956) by Robert Heinlein.
In the service room a passenger
cylinder was waiting. Our guide
entered it with us. At the switch-station we had our breath knocked
out with the bumping, but the
cylinder remained sealed. And after
another ten minutes in the vacuum
tube, we reached our unknown destination.
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from Wandl, The Invader
More Ideas
and Technology by Ray Cummings
Tech news articles related to Wandl, The Invader
Tech news articles related to works by Ray Cummings
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| Futuristic Transit Elevated Bus Never Really Worked |
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'There was a wall ahead... It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
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'Compounds devised by the biochemists for the rapid building of bone...'
'The car faltered as the external command came to brake...'
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