of a mile distant. It will be necessary therefore to exhaust the air between the end we are watching and that point. A little trap-door—the mouth of the apparatus—is instantly shut, a cock is turned, the air-pump below begins to suck, and in a few seconds you hear a soft thud against the end of the tube—the little door is opened, and a cylinder of gutta-percha, encased in flannel, about four inches long, which fits the tube, but loosely, is immediately ejected upon the counter; the cylinder is opened at one end, and there we find the despatch.
Now it is quite clear that it is only necessary to enlarge the tubes and to employ more powerful engines and air-pumps in order to convey a thousand letters and despatches, book parcels, &c., in the same manner. And this the company are forthwith about to do. They propose in their prospectus to unite all the district post-offices in the metropolis with the central office in Saint Martin’s-le-Grand. We particularly beg the attention of the indignant suburban gentleman who is always writing to the “Times” respecting the delays which take place in the delivery of district letters, to this scheme. At present a letter is longer going from one of the outer circles of the post-office delivery to one of the inner ones, than from London to Brighton; but with the working of the Pneumatic Despatch Company a totally different state of things will obtain. An obvious reason of the present delay is the crowded state of the London thoroughfares, which obstructs the mail carts in their passage to the central office, or from district to district; another reason is that, from the very nature of things, letters are by the present system only despatched at intervals of two or three hours. But when we have Æolus to do our work, the letters will flow towards head-quarters for sorting and further distribution incessantly. Indeed, the different tubes will practically bring the ten district post-offices of London under one roof.
At the present moment the contract rate at which the mail-carts go is eight miles per hour. The Pneumatic Company can convey messages at the rate of thirty miles an hour, and this speed can be doubled if necessary. The same system will be ultimately adopted for bringing the mail-bags to and from the railway-stations, and instead of seeing the red mail-carts careering through the streets, we shall know that all our love-letters, lawyers’ letters, and despatches of importance, are flying beneath our feet as smoothly and imperceptibly as the fluid flows outwards and inwards from that great pumping machine—the human heart. The spider’s web that is being hung over our head has indeed a formidable rival in this web of air-tubes under ground, inasmuch as by the latter we can send our thoughts at length, and with perfect secrecy, and quite as quickly for all practicable purposes, as by the telegraph. The Post-Office authorities, if they adopt the scheme, of which we have no doubt, will be able to forward letters with a very great increase of despatch at a much smaller cost to itself than even at present. A pipe between the Charing Cross post-office and Saint Martin’s-le-Grand is about to be laid, so that the public service will very speedily test its capabilities, if further testing indeed be needed.
If we can suck letters in this manner between point and point of the City, it will naturally be asked, why not lay down pipes along the railroads, and convey your mails by pneumatic power? But it must be remembered that the exhaustive process cannot be put in operation for any long distance without great loss of power, and that it would be difficult to send letters great distances, even with relays of air-pumps, much faster than by ordinary mail-trains. However it is impossible to say what may not be eventually done in this direction, but we are certain, from actual experiment carried on for years, that the system is perfectly adapted for this vast metropolis, as regards the postal service, and there is as little doubt that it is quite capable of taking upon itself a parcel-delivery service,—indeed, the size of the articles to be conveyed is only limited by the power of the pumping-engine, and the size of the conducting-tube.
The company are now about to lay down a pipe between the Docks and the Exchange, for the conveyance of samples of merchandise, thus practically bringing the Isle of Dogs into Cornhill; and for all we know this invention may hereafter be destined to relieve the gorged streets of the metropolis of some of its heavy traffic.
The projector of the railway system could scarcely have foreseen the extent to which the locomotive would supersede other means of progression, and the principle of suction certainly starts on its career with as much certainty of succeeding as did that scheme. Some time towards the end of the century we may perchance hear the householder giving directions to have his furniture sucked up to Highgate—for hills form but little impediment to the new system of traction, or the coal merchant ordering a waggon load of coals to be shot into the pipe for delivery a dozen miles distance. And this new power, like the trunk of the elephant, is capable of being employed on the most trivial as well as upon the weightiest matters.
At the station of the International Telegraph Company, in Telegraph Street, it acts the part of messenger between the different parts of the establishment. The pipes wind about from room to room, sufficient curve being maintained in them for the passage of the little travelling cylinder which contains the message, and small packages and written communications traverse almost as quickly in all directions as does the human voice in the gutta-percha tubing, to which in fact it is the appropriate addendum.
In all large establishments, such as hotels and public offices, the application of the invention will be invaluable; and, from its fetching and carrying capabilities, it may well be nick-named the tubular “Page.”
That we have been recording the birth of an invention destined to play a great part in the world, we have, as guarantees, the names of the well-known engineers, Messrs. Rammell and Latimer Clarke, and among the directors that of Mr.