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Pneumatic systems use compressed air to move an object. We're familiar with pneumatic pistons, but at one time they were used to send cylinders for communications. When I was young, an old, family-owned department store I used to visit used them to shoot orders around the building. It was all quite fascinating to my young self.
In the late 19th Century Alfred Ely Beach got the inspiration to create a subway that would use pneumatics to send a cylindrical car full of passengers to their destination. The idea was you could use a blower to create the air pressure needed to push the car, and then reverse the blower to suck the car back.
In 1870 he built a proof of concept, demonstration tunnel under Broadway that was about 100 yards long. To avoid complications with the government, he had claimed he was building a mail delivery system and only revealed it was to move passengers when it was completed. He then planned on building a much longer system, but he faced opposition from landowners, the 'Boss' Tweed political machine, and finally the financial panic of 1873 that was the nail in the coffin of the project.
You can read about it in more detail at Beach Pneumatic Transit: The 1870 Subway That Could Have Been?
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| Alfred Ely Beach |
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