The Dead Media Notebook

by Bruce Sterling

  “Under a research program on advanced freight movement, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) with the support of the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center is examining the technical and economic feasibility of tube transportation systems to address future freight transportation requirements.

  “Tube freight transportation is a class of unmanned transportation systems in which close-fitting capsules or trains of capsules carry freight through tubes between terminals. All historic systems were pneumatically powered and often referred to as pneumatic capsule pipelines.

  “One modern proposed system called SUBTRANS uses capsules that are electrically powered with linear induction motors and run on steel rails in a tube about two meters (6 feet) in diameter. The system can be thought of as a small unmanned train in a tube carrying containerized cargo.”.

  “Potential Advantages of Tube Freight Transportation Systems “Tube transportation systems have a number of attractive features that make them worthy of evaluation as alternatives for future freight transportation systems. Because such systems are unmanned and fully automatic, they are safer than truck or railroad systems. When traveling down grades, the capsules may be able to regenerate energy for improved energy efficiency. Because they are enclosed, they are unaffected by weather and are not subject to most common rail and highway accidents. Hazardous cargo can be more safely transported than on surface systems. The tubes could also be used as conduits for communication cables for the future information highway.”

  “The tubes can be placed above, on, or below ground. Underground locations are useful in environmentally sensitive areas and are important where surface congestion makes surface right-of-way difficult or expensive to obtain. Much right-of-way potentially exists below our present highway system.”

  “Tube transportation has a history that extends back at least 200 years. During this period, systems for both passengers and freight have been built and operated. Some are in operation today. In addition, there have been many more proposals that were never built. All of the historical tube transportation systems were pneumatically powered.

  “George Medhurst, a London businessman, is considered the earliest proponent of pneumatic-powered railways although there were a few earlier, brief suggestions from others. He first published a freight proposal in 1810, a passenger proposal in 1812, and a more comprehensive set of proposals in 1827.

  “Despite four demonstration systems, including a 95-m (312-ft), underground system built in New York City in 1869-70, no large-size tube transportation system has been introduced into common carrier service. The primary result of this activity was to lend support to the development of underground electric railway systems for urban passenger transportation. However, small diameter pneumatic pipelines have been providing reliable freight transportation around the world for more than 150 years.

  “Common applications of pneumatic pipelines before World War II were the high-priority movement of documents and parts in industrial environments and movement of letters and telegrams under city streets to bypass congestion. These systems were built with tubes ranging from 5 to 20 centimeters (2 to 8 inches) in diameter. Such systems are still being built today to expedite small shipments.”

  “After World War II, larger pneumatic systems were developed and built in Japan and Russia to move bulk materials such as limestone and garbage. These systems had considerably greater throughput as a result of both their increased diameters of 0.9 to 1.2 m (3 to 4 ft) and their mode of operation, which allowed more capsules to move through the tube at one time. By the early 1970s, several groups began to give consideration to the use of these pipeline designs for common carrier, general merchandise freight applications using tubes 1.2 to 1.8 m (4 to 6 ft) in diameter.

  “Nippon Steel Corporation and Daifuku Machinery Works Ltd., using an early license from TRANSCO of Houston, Texas, have built a 0.6 m (2ft) diameter, 1.5 km (0.9 mi), double line to move burnt lime in Nippon Steel’s Muroran Number 2 steel plant. This elevated line was built in the mid-1980s and uses capsule trains (two cars per train) to move 22,000 metric tons (24,266 short tons) per month. This system is called AIRAPID.

  “Sumitomo Cement Co. built a similar system in 1983 to move limestone 3.2 km (2 mi) between a mine and their cement plant. The 1 m (3.2ft) diameter pipe carries three car capsule trains delivering 2.2 million metric tons (2.43 million short tons) per year. This system was originally based on a Russian license but was considerably redesigned by the company.

  “A number of tube systems, called TRANSPROGRESS systems, for moving crushed rock are being used in the former Soviet Union. An 11 km (6.8 mi) line for garbage was built in 1983 from St. Petersburg to an outlying processing facility using TRANSPROGRESS technology. This technology has also been applied to intraplant systems.

  “Historically, there is a precedent for underground freight operations. The most notable underground freight system was the 80 km (50 mi) electric railway system built under the city of Chicago for the collection and distribution of general cargo and coal.

  “The Chicago system operated from 1904 to 1958, interfacing with the main-line railroads.”

  Source: Tube Freight Transportation by Lawrence Vance and Milton K. Mills

  William Vandersteel. The Future of Our Transportation Infrastructure, Ampower Corporation, North Bergen, N.J., 1993. Masaki Koshi. “An Automated Underground Tube Network for Urban Goods Transport,” Journal of International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1992. R. Livesey. “Blown Freight Is a Lovely Change From Road and Rail,” The Engineer, London, England, Oct. 28, 1971. “Im N chsten Jahrtausend in 57 Minuten von Genf nach Zurich,” Der Bund, Sonderbeilage, Bern, Switzerland, Sep. 8, 1992. “Vacuum Technology Weighed for Swiss Maglev Proposal,” MAGLEV News, Vol. 1, No. 15, May 17, 1993. “AIRAPID Capsule-Tube Transport System,” promotional brochure of Nippon Steel Corp., Daifuku Machinery Works Ltd., Chiyoda-Ku, Tokyo, Japan, undated. “The Capsule Liner,” promotional brochure of Plant Engineer Division of Sumitomo Metal Ind. Ltd., Chiyoda-Ku, Tokyo, Japan. “TRANSPROGRESS Systems for Pipeline Pneumatic Container Freight Transportation,” promotional brochure of Licinsintorg, Moscow, Russia, 1986. I. Zandi, W.B. Allen, E.K. Morlok, K. Gimm, T. Plaut, and J. Warner. Transport of Solid Commodities via Freight Pipeline, Department of Civil and Urban Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa., published in five volumes for the Department of Transportation, Publication No. DOT-TST-76T-35 through DOT-TST-76T-39, July 1976. Eric Rath. Container Systems, John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1973.

  The Clegg-Selvan pneumatic vehicle; wire conveyors, cash carriers, parcel carriers; the Lamson Tube; pneumatic tube industrial history

  [Bruce Sterling remarks: the pneumatic tube conveyor is very much alive, and evolving into new technological niches year by year. Its technical history however is surprisingly rich, full, and littered with the dead, as this corporate document shows.]

  “The first documented, genuine pneumatic tube in the United States is officially listed in a patent issued to Samuel Clegg and Jacob Selvan in 1840. This was a vehicle with wheels, on a track, positioned within a tube. Inventing and patenting went on for years in North America but there just didn’t seem to be much of an effort to locate markets for this new invention.

  “In Civil War times, a phenomenon called ‘five-and- dimes’ were thriving all over the Eastern Seaboard. These stores were rapidly taking on the appearance of something larger, the department store. Cash required rapid movement from areas on the trading floor to the safer reaches of the store. Some of the stores were building up, not out, and this slowed the change making process even more.

  “William Stickney Lamson, and his wife, took charge of a family enterprise called the Rachet Store. This retail business would soon shape up to become one of the first American ‘five-and-dimes’. The need in this business to move change lead to several innovations including wrapping change in handkerchiefs and tossing it to the sales clerks i
n the front of the store.

  “Innovations soon gave way to invention. Bill Lamson cut a croquet ball in half, hollowed out both sides and placed change inside. Then, after rubber-banding the halves together, would toss the ball from clerk to clerk. This lead to the ‘carriers’ on a wire and using multiple- spring gadgets to move the balls at higher speeds.

  “The wire conveyors or ‘cash carriers’ suited the smaller stores fine, but the ever-expanding department stores in America required additional speed and more efficiency. Soon Bill Lamson was to jump on the pneumatic tube train in America.

  “At about this same time, Mr. William Grover and brother Mr. Clarence Grover founded a company in Woodburn, Michigan. Included in the official company mission, which appears in the Record of Articles dated 1917, is the following: (the company was to be involved in), ‘the manufacture, sales and distribution of Pneumatic Tubes; Cash and Parcel Carriers; Store, Office and Factory Fixtures; Wood and Metal Novelties; Tools and Machinery.”

  “Some years later the Grover Company was purchased by the Powers Regulator Company of Skokie, Illinois. This move in the marketplace would result in two new companies that dominate the marketplace today.

  “The first company was formed after the new Powers Regulator made a major shift in the way its products were to be distributed. In the Grover Company, products were sold and installed by a group of distributors around the country. Powers Regulator decided to market and sell all products from ‘in-house’ and because of that move, had no need for a distributor network. This left several pneumatic tube distributors with no source of supply.

  “In early 1964, Mr. Ross Cook, Mr. Wilfred Rathbun, Mr. Frank Ware and Mr. Ted Nuestad, got together and formed a new corporation, Zip Tube Systems, Inc. The first stock certificate was issued to Ross Cook, Inc. on March 6, 1964. The new company was located at 6621 Eight Avenue, Los Angeles, California. The company moved once within California, and finally to Denver, Colorado in 1981. By the time Zip Tube Systems, Inc. moved, it had expanded its distributor network to have national coverage. Today, we have now expanded into the international market and have in excess of 30 distributors internationally.

  “Through the years, Zip has developed and refined an extensive product line to service the need of a diverse customer base. Zip Tube Systems, Inc. is unique. It is owned by a network of engineers and installers throughout the world. This experience has made us a leader in the pneumatic tube industry.

  “During the last several years we have made a significant increase in our product line with the introduction of an automatic and a semi-automatic pneumatic tube system. We have also introduced an extreme duty line of equipment designed for the steel mill, foundry and other harsh industrial environments. These products compliment our already large selection of standard product lines. Zip is especially proud to be one of the only companies that will custom manufacture a pneumatic tube system to an individual customer’s needs.

  “We would like to welcome you to Zip’s long history, and we are confident you will find your pneumatic tube system extremely economical, rewarding and easy to maintain.”

  Source: Company Profile And History of Zip Tube Systems Inc. [2015 note: Ziptube.com is dead but visible through archive.org]

  Fungal Hallucinogens in Decaying Archives

  [Bruce Sterling remarks: this colorful medical tale of the hazards of decaying media has all the qualities of a Jan Harold Brunvand urban legend. Improbable, yes, but what a bar story.]

  “Book Fungus Can Get You High” by Ellen Warren, Chicago Tribune “CHICAGO, Getting high on great literature is taking on a whole new meaning. It turns out that, if you spend enough time around old books and decaying manuscripts in dank archives, you can start to hallucinate. Really.

  “We’re not talking psychedelia, ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ stuff, here. But maybe only a step or two away from that.

  “Experts on the various fungi that feed on the pages and on the covers of books are increasingly convinced that you can get high, or at least a little wacky, by sniffing old books. Fungus on books, they say, is a likely source of hallucinogenic spores.

  “The story of The Strangeness in the Stacks first started making its way through the usually staid antiquarian books community late last year with the publication of a paper in the British medical journal, The Lancet.

  “There, Dr. R.J. Hay wrote of the possibility that ‘fungal hallucinogens’ in old books could lead to ‘enhancement of enlightenment.’ “’The source of inspiration for many great literary figures may have been nothing more than a quick sniff of the bouquet of mouldy books,’ wrote Hay, one of England’s leading mycologists (fungus experts) and dean of dermatology at Guy’s Hospital in London.

  “Well, said an American expert on such matters, it may not be that easy.

  “’I agree with his premise, but not his dose. It would take more than a brief sniff,’ aid Monona Rossol, an authority on the health effects of materials used in the arts world.

  “For all the parents out there, these revelations would seem ideal for persuading youngsters to spend some quality time in the archives.

  “But attention kids: You can’t get high walking through the rare books section of the library.

  “Rossol said it would take a fairly concentrated exposure over a considerable period of time for someone to breathe in enough of the spores of hallucinogenic fungus to seriously affect behavior. There are no studies to tell how much or how long before strange behavior takes hold.

  “Still, this much seems apparent, if you want to find mold, the only place that may rival a refrigerator is a library.

  “Just last week the Las Cruces, N.M., Public Library was closed indefinitely, prompted by health concerns after a fungus outbreak in the reference section. Library director Carol Brey said the fungus promptly spread to old history books and onward to the literature section.

  “The town’s Mold Eradication Team, she said, shuttered the library as a precaution. ‘We didn’t want to take any chances,’ she said. A mold removal company will address the problem, which is believed to have originated in the air conditioning system.

  “Psychedelic mushrooms, the classic hallucinogenic fungus, derive their mind-altering properties from the psilocybin and psilocin they produce naturally.

  “One historic example of this phenomenon, scientists now believe, is the madness that prevailed in the late 1600s in Salem, Mass., where ergot, a hallucinogenic fungus, infected the rye crops that went into rye bread. Ergot contains lysergic acid, a key compound of the hallucinogenic drug LSD. This tiny fungus and its wild effects on the rye-bread-eating women may have led to the Salem witch trials.

  “Rossol, a New York chemist and consultant to Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History who publishes the newsletter Acts Facts, the journal of Arts, Crafts and Theater Safety, said that there have not been scientific studies on the hallucinogenic effects of old books.

  “But, relying on accounts from newsletter readers who report their own strange symptoms, ranging from dizziness to violent nausea, she says there is no doubt that moldy old volumes harbor hallucinogens.”

  Source: Ellen Warren in Chicago Tribune (no date given); reprinted in Arizona Republic, October 6, 1996, Houston Chronicle October 6, 1996, and in Rare Books Newsletter of the National Library of Scotland pages 59-62 (Autumn 1996) see also: Sick Library Syndrome by Dr. R. J. Hay in The Lancet 346, December 16, 1995, pages 1573-1574.

  The Robotyper; the Flexowriter

  From Mike Kelley

  Back in the late 1950’s and early 60’s I worked first in the U.S. Senate, then in the White House, operating an automatic typewriter that made a final product, a letter, which the recipient thought was hand-typed. The salutation was personalized, as was the address, but the body of the letter was typed automatically.

  I could operate three of these machines at once, turning out 85-90 “hand typed” letters an hour. I moved sequentially from one to the next, typin
g in the address and Dear ____ on one, while the previous machine was still typing the body of the letter.

  The machines were called Robotypers and they are indeed a dead medium today. They operated like player pianos, each with its own air pump, a coded roll representing the “hand typed letter,” and an IBM model B or C typewriter (another dead medium).

  There was a platform in front of the box that held the roll, with little hooks for each of the typewriter’s key levers. One hook would go over each key lever, beneath the keyboard, and these would pull down the keys as the roll, with its coded air holes, was pulled over a bar.

  Mechanics had a hard time disengaging the typewriter from the Robo machine when repairs were needed.

  At the U.S. Senate, the place I worked was called the “Robo Room”, a terrible name for a room with a terrible sound.

  In the White House, we had the machines in a separate room near the Correspondence Section. At the White House, the only type of IBM machine used for letters was the Proportional Spacing model, also a dead medium. These models used different widths for various letters, much like (but not nearly as complex) as cold type.

  Most typed characters took up 3 space units. The “i” was two units wide, small “m” and “w” were 4, and the capital “m” and “w” were 5 units. This made the spacing movement uneven. In making the Robo Rolls at the White House, I had to add room on the roll to compensate for proportional spacing, a work something like typesetting.

  Without this extra work on the rolls, the old IBM’s keys would overstrike typed characters on the page, or sometimes keys would even smash into each other. I don’t see the Robotyper on your Master List of Dead Media, but it surely is one very dead medium today.

  At its peak, however, it gave a lot of folks the feeling that their mail to politicians got a hand typed reply.