SENT AS PACKAGE
TO TEST AIR TUBE.
QUEER EXPERIENCE, YEARS AGO,
OF EDWARD WINSTANLEY.
At First Public Demonstration of
England's Pneumatic Carriers
for Mail, He Was the
Freight.
"I was a boy in those days," said Mr. Winstanley yesterday, "and it was in the early '60s. In order to handle American and Irish mails expeditiously, the government constructed a pneumatic tube between Euston station, where the trains delivered the mails, and the general post office. The distance is about five miles by tube, I should say. On the day the system was to be inaugurated, for the first time anywhere in the world, there was a great crowd and greater ceremony. The Lord mayor with his wig and gown and the other dignitaries were massed . An uncle of mine, there by virtue of his being a member of the Apothecaries' Guild, took me along to the Euston end of the line.
Although I say myself, I was a handsome kid. There is no denying that. I was considered handsome, though spiteful relatives said it wasn't that I was handsome, it was that they could get me into the box. I was picked up, landed in a thing that looked like an oak coffin, the lid shut down and opened again. It was shut down at Euston station and opened at the general post office. The journey had been made so quickly and so imperceptibly that I did not know that I had started. Of course, they had to get me back to my uncle, so I was shoved into the box again and with 100 pounds pressure to the square inch I got back to the inaugural party in less time than it takes to tell about it. Since then the mail of vast fleets of trans-Atlantic and Irish sea steamers has gone through the tube. Other tubes soon followed."
Then United States postal department is waiting till the union depot question is settled to construct a pneumatic tube here for handling the mails between the train sheds and the post office. At present it takes an electric tram twenty minutes to transfer the mails from the office to the station, and then only at stated intervals. By means of a pneumatic tube there would be less than a couple of minutes lost in making the transfer, and the work would go on continuously, thus avoiding temporary congestion.
