Pneumatic tubes replaced the older "trolley" or cable system for routing sales slips and cash to a central cashier not on the sales floor.

In the days before every department store purchase was self-service, this liberated sales clerks from having to maintain a till, speeding up customer service a bit but, more importantly, minimizing pilferage.

As a kid shopping with Mom at Best or Saks, I was always fascinated by the "whoosh - clunk" as the capsule returned to the sales counter with the change and the sales slip stamped "PAID."

I've seen these in department stores, but never knew that Western Union had a system under the streets. I can't remember ever seeing tubes along telephone lines, that's why I figure they're buried. Were they run along with the electrical conduits? Are they still there?

This is really interesting.

The lady is an early webmaster.

Worked at a large furniture and hardware wholesale company one summer in the 50's when I was 16. The man that worked in the central tube room went on vacation for 2 weeks and I got to route all of the tubes that flew in to be routed to the designated department. The learning curve on this job was a straight line.

Looks like the design work of Theodor Geisel if I am not mistaken.

When I worked as a pipefitter at Chrysler Canada in the 1960s we looked after the Lamson Tube system that ran throughout the plant to different departments. The thing I remember being the as being the main problem was small "dents" in the tubes from someone placing a ladder against the tube or something falling against the tube. It didn't take much of a dent "somewhere in the line" to hang that cartridge up. I spent quite a bit of time "walking the line" looking for dings.