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"The world is really so surreal these days that it's necessary for us to blunt it somehow in order to stay sane. The artist functions to short-circuit the buffering mechanism, so that people can occasionally perceive the weirdness of things as they are."
- William Gibson
 |
| Pneumatic-Tube Zone | ||
| The portion of a city that is served by direct tubes to each dwelling. |
The logistics of the city were quite advanced; delivery was accomplished without human intervention.
| They leaped out on the floor. Again there were no people. No bawling speakers. No gongs. Only the open mouths of pneumatic tubes, an endless row of them, each marked with its destination...
 (Tube Station from 'Mechanocracy' by Miles J. Breuer) Out there was a row of trucks with laundry packages dropping into them from overhead chutes. They were automatic trucks such as are used for making deliveries beyond the pneumatic-tube zone. |
| Technovelgy from Mechanocracy,
by Miles J. Breuer. Published by Amazing Stories in 1932 Additional resources -
|
The idea of using this kind of tube on a larger scale for transportation of people rather than things was quite popular. 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 tubecar from The Faceless Men (1948) by Leo Zagat, the
vacutubes from Double Star (1956) by Robert Heinlein and the public tubes from The Houses of Iszm (1954) by Jack Vance.
The concept of pneumatic tubes as a means of delivering freight was not created by science fiction authors; it was originally proposed by George Medhurst, a London businessman in the early nineteenth century. Pneumatic tube systems were commonplace in the first part of the twentieth century in large buildings, or interconnected locations like hospitals. I occasionally worked in a hospital tube room in the early 1970's; it was used to take doctor's orders to remote locations like the pharmacy, as well as send (carefully wrapped) blood samples to labs for analysis. It was effectively a way station.
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Additional
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and Technology from Mechanocracy
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and Technology by Miles J. Breuer
Tech news articles related to Mechanocracy
Tech news articles related to works by Miles J. Breuer
Pneumatic-Tube Zone-related
news articles:
- Pipedream Underground Delivery At Peachtree Corners
| 3D Printing A 12-Meter Boat Hull |
| China Still Working On Rescue Robot That Eats People |
| Can One Robot Do Many Tasks? |
| Roborock Saros Z70 Is A Robot Vacuum With An Arm |
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