1. New York City once had a system of pneumatic tubes beneath is streets, whisking up to 6 million pieces of mail at 30mph around the city each day. The postal workers who staffed the system were known as rocketeers. about.usps.com/who-we-are/pos…
2. From the beginning, the pneumatic tube service was controversial. It was fast, allowing multiple messages to be exchanged between correspondents in a single day—and thus, a boon for business. It was also the most expensive way to move letters from one point to another.
3. It’s an old debate: Is the Post Office a service, facilitating public good at public expense? Or should it be run more like a business, looking for efficiencies and forcing customers to pay the cost of what they receive?
Trucks were slower—but much cheaper.
4. At the end of 1953, the last of the pneumatic mail was shut down. In 1971, the Post Office Department became the Postal Service, with a mandate to pay for itself. Today, “a series of tubes” is a metaphor for our IT infrastructure, no longer a literal description.
5. But the short-lived pneumatic mail is a good example of the possibilities of cutting-edge public services. It lasted decades longer than, say, the fax machine. And a century later, we still want to have all the benefits of public services, just not at public expense.
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