“The pneumatic tube system in Paris dates from the same year as that of Berlin. Here a novel feature was introduced in the method of compressing the air, for instead of using a steam engine it was compressed in the tanks by displacement with water from the city mains. The tubes of the present system are 2.55 inches diameter, and the carriers are made up in trains of from 6 to 10, with a leather-covered piston at the rear which fits the tubes snugly and drives them forward. The tubes are wrought iron and the speed is 15 to 23 miles an hour.”
Source: Scientific American, December 11, 1897
Pneumatic Mail in America
From Dan Howland
The father of the pneumatic tube system of railways in America was the late Alfred Ely Beach, who for half a century was one of the proprietors of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. His experimental railway was first exhibited at the American Institute Fair held in New York City in 1867.”Less well known but equally meritorious was the system of pneumatic postal tubes designed by Mr. Beach at about the same period. “In 1870, also, he built an 8 inch iron tube a thousand feet long, whose interior was glazed to form a smooth surface. This lead to a large receiving box, from which a second pipe led to an exhausting engine.
A letter dropped into the pipe at any point was swept along by suction due to the exhaustion of the air from the box, from which it was easily removed.” [Illustrations show a car about the size of a backyard steam train. Above it, postal workers sort letters and drop them into slots. To maintain the difference in air pressure, at the end of each slot is a tiny revolving door, laid sideways like a paddlewheel. As the car approached, slots and tabs in the top of the car tripped the appropriate paddlewheel, dropping letters into the correct compartments of the car.
The pneumatic tube has been in use in this country on a small scale from a quarter of a century for the transmission of cash in retail stores and for general telegraphic purposes. The Western Union Telegraph Company laid down four lines in 1876 from the main office in Broadway, New York, one to Pearl Street, and one to the Cotton Exchange. To these it has since added two miles of double line which run beneath Broadway to its uptown office. The most notable event in the recent history of pneumatic transmission occurred in Philadelphia, when a system of 6 inch tubes was built between the main post office and the sub-post office on Chestnut Street, near Third Street, a distance of 3,000 feet.
The reader will observe that in all the European systems none of the tubes are larger than 3 inches in diameter, so that in respect of size alone the Philadelphia plant marked a bold advance upon any existing system, the area of the tubes being increased more than four-fold, and the capacity of the carriers in proportion. The speed, moreover, was nearly doubled, and hence, with the improved mechanical appliances for transmitting and receiving, the capacity of each tube cannot be less than twenty times as great as that in the old country systems. The Philadelphia plant was opened in 1893 and has been in successful operation ever since.
“In 1897, the Tubular Dispatch Company, of New York, was authorized to construct a system of postal delivery tubes between the general post office and certain sub- stations in New York City. It was decided to adopt the system already in successful operation in Philadelphia, and to this end the Batcheller Pneumatic Tube Company, of Philadelphia, drew up plans for a set of lines running from the general post office to the Produce Exchange, to the Forty-second Street depot, to One Hundred and Twenty- fifth Street, and across the Brooklyn Bridge to Brooklyn. The line to the Produce Exchange and return was built, and the opening took place on October 7 of this year.”
Source: Scientific American, December 11, 1897
the Pigeon Post
From Candi Strecker
“Bra manufacturers faced shortages during World War II, as nylon, rubber, silk and other necessary fabrics were requisitioned for the duration. One company, MaidenForm, took up the slack by making vests for carrier pigeons.”
[Bruce Sterling remarks: it’s hard to beat this anecdote as an odd social byproduct of a dead media industry. But is it true? While carrier pigeons saw a great deal of action during World War One, I have no data at all on any World War Two pigeons; much less flocks of pigeons so vast in extent that they could plausibly occupy the idle factories of MaidenForm.]
Lynn Peril replies: I originally picked up the quote from a secondary source, Marilyn Yalom’s History of the Breast, then found the primary source: a PR brochure called “Maidenform, Inc.: A Company Built By A Brand.” Published by Maidenform in 1992, this pamphlet recounts the company’s history from the 1920s to the early 1990s. It includes the following: “[Maidenform’s wartime] Manufacturing concentrated on products for the Armed Forces, ranging from parachutes for flares to vests for carrier pigeons.” And then there’s a picture of what looks like a pigeon in bondage, including a little black hood. Now, as to whether the army used any of these pigeon vests, who knows? But Maidenform, by its own account, was making them. Hope that clears up any questions!
Source: Mystery Date fanzine by Lynn Peril, issue #6
Radio Killed the Vaudeville Star
From Gary Gach
[Bruce Sterling remarks: “Vaudeville” is dead but probably not a “medium,” whereas radio is not only a living medium but showing a great deal of experimental vitality. If there’s a “dead media” aspect to the compelling narrative that follows, it’s the eerie practice of a theater full of vaudeville patrons sitting patiently in their seats to watch a radio.
And who better to relate this chronicle of technological change than veteran American entertainer George Burns, star of vaudeville, radio, movies, and television.]
From George Burns’ memoirs: “The only problem was that just as we were becoming stars, vaudeville was dying. No one could pin the rap on us, though. Everybody believes it was the movies that killed vaudeville. That’s not true. Movies, vaudeville, burlesque, the local stock companies, all survived together.
“Then radio came in. For the first time people didn’t have to leave their homes to be entertained. The performers came into their house. Gracie and I knew that vaudeville was finished when theaters began advertising that their shows would be halted for fifteen minutes so that the audience could listen to ‘Amos & Andy.’ And when the ‘Amos & Andy’ program came on, the vaudeville would stop, they would bring a radio onstage, and the audience would sit there watching radio.
“It’s impossible to explain the impact that radio had on the world to anyone who didn’t live through that time. Before radio, people had to wait for the newspaper to learn what was happening in the world. Before radio, the only way to see a performer was to see a performer. And maybe most important, before radio there was no such thing as a commercial.
“Radio made everybody who owned one a theater manager. They could listen to whatever they wanted to. For a lot of performers, the beginning of radio meant the end of their careers. A lot of acts couldn’t make the transition. Powers’ Elephants, mimes, acrobats, seals, strippers, what could they do on the radio? What was the announcer going to say, the mime is now pretending to be trapped in a box? The seal caught the fish? You should see this girl without her fan? Gracie and I had the perfect act for radio, we talked.”
Source: Gracie: A Love Story by George Burns, GK Hall & Co 1989 (out of print in paper, the book is still available in audiocassette)
Pigeon Vests
From David Morton
Regarding the “pigeon vest” anecdote (Working Note 35.0). I don’t know if pigeons were used in the second World War, but I do know of a WWII-era product called the “pigeon vest.
“It was not worn by the pigeon, but by a soldier, specifically a paratrooper, who was to carry with him as he jumped one or more pigeons in the pockets of this vest. I don’t know if this is exactly the product that the earlier message referred to, but it does indicate that the U.S. army intended to use pigeons during WWII. Incidently, the source of this information is an army technical manual that I found on the shelf at t
he Rutgers University library.
Pigeon Spies of World War Two
From Lars-Erik Astrom
“In areas [in occupied France] where we had no direct contact with the Resistance movement, we used to get our bombers to drop homing pigeons in containers which would open after a few hours and release the birds if they had not been found by someone on the ground.
“Attached to the containers were questionnaires, asking a series of simple questions which, for example, a farm labourer might be able to answer, and which might be helpful to us. My own question was: ‘Are there any German radio stations in your neighbourhood with aerials which rotate?’ This feature was an almost certain criterion of a radar station, and we dropped the pigeons wherever we saw a gap in our knowledge.
“Before the end of 1942 the pigeons had given us the locations of three stations hitherto unknown to us, and more followed during 1943.” page 305: “ fortunately a heavily-laden and very gallant pigeon arrived at its home base, having been dropped by Bomber Command somewhere in North France with my usual questionnaire. It had been picked up by a Frenchman who had been present in one of the German nightfighter control stations, perhaps as a cleaner, and when he saw that there was a question about radar he had clearly delighted in describing the events one night in the station at le Croix Caluyau as he had witnessed them.
“I have never seen a pigeon carrying such a profuse message. It ended with the exclamation by the German Commander, who had spent the night trying to intercept seven hundred separate bombers without being able to locate one: ‘He would rather be attacked by a hundred bombers than submit to that torrent of paper again!’” [Lars-Erik Astrom remarks: This was the British radar countermeasure, the Window project: they filled the air with lots of metal foil strips to clutter the German’s radar vision.]
“Another wartime experience that made me wonder was the ability of pigeons which had spent their entire lives in England to home back to their bases after we had dropped them on the Continent. I spent some time with the Air Ministry Pigeon Service in the months after the war, learning from experts what pigeons could do.”
“Geographical landmarks, though, could not explain a good deal of the wartime flying, and I began to wonder whether the birds had developed a form of inertial navigation, based on the semicircular canals in their heads, which were known to be accelerometers. We tried to keep the Air Ministry Pigeon Service in being after the war, with a view to organizing a prolonged series of experiments, but the scheme fell through when both the pigeons and I left the Air Ministry.”
Source: Most Secret War, by R. V. Jones, London 1978, ISBN 0241 89746 7
Military Pigeoneers of World War Two
From James Agenbroad
“The Pigeon Service “Nonelectrical means were rapidly disappearing in air communications. but ground needs were somewhat more diverse and still held room for non electric methods. Thus pigeon communications, an uncomplicated activity, had a secure if minor place in the company of its intricate counterparts. In exercises and maneuvers, the ground arms habitually employed pigeons units theoretically located at inaccessible spots.
“The Camp McCoy maneuvers of 1940, for example, had developed ‘an immense respect’ for them. In Hawaii, the departmental commander had asked for them; and in Alaska also, the chief of the new defense command, Brig. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., had interested himself in their value in remote regions, especially in the chilling and rugged wildernesses where pilots might be forced to land.
“Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the noted authority on the Arctic, Frederick C. Lincoln, expert of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and others advised the Signal Corps on a plan for the use of pigeons there. The effort failed through no more hazard than ordinary delay: birds which had been started on their way to Buckner’s new Fort Richardson while they were still young enough to be trained were grandfatherly when they arrived.
“Innovations at the Monmouth Pigeon Center, where the appropriation was $2,490 more in 1941 than it had been the year before, were similarly undetermined of their final success, and similarly plagued with an aspect of absurdity. A joke revived from World War I hinted that the Signal Crops was crossbreeding pigeons with parrots so that the birds could say their messages, with angels so that they could sing them, and with Western Union boys so that they could sing and salute, too.
“The actual experiments were rather more likely to succeed. The pigeon experts were making a serious effort to train the birds to work at night, and to fly out from their home lofts as well as back to them. In effect, one experiment crossbred pigeons with a nighthawk and the second with a boomerang.
“In no way inconsequential, the work was supported by an increasing and general agreement to organize separate pigeon companies to serve field commanders. Plans went forward to create the first, although it was temporarily called the 2nd Pigeon Company, of these units at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, in June, and to draw at least two of the officers from that considerable group of persons who especially admired these birds.
“Pigeon fanciers all over the country had sought to lend fine stock to be bred with the pedigreed strains in the Signal Corps lofts at Fort Monmouth, Fort Benning, and Fort Sam Houston. Many enthusiasts in the breeding and racing of pigeons had seen service in 1917 and 1918, and some were now coming back into the Signal Corps for duty in the emergency, among these being the officers for the new company and those performing the experiments at the Pigeon Breeding and Training Center.
“With the first addition to its cadre, the new unit, redesignated the 280th Pigeon Company, made a reconnaissance trip to Vicksburg, reconnoitered along the Mississippi River, and after a little while took part in the summer maneuvers. Pigeons from the Fort Sam Houston loft were winning long races by flying distances as great as 600 miles within 17 or 18 hours.
“Both there and at Fort Benning the signal officers received instructions to breed young stock for the 280th, first for the maneuvers, then to replace a 75% loss of birds during them. The 280th for a time had 800 or 1,000 pigeons on hand at the beginning of a month and only 250 or 275 survivors at its close.
“In the Hawaiian Department the loft was transferred from Schofield Barracks to Fort Shafter in an effort to reduce losses: the birds had been flying into wires, disappearing into an eucalyptus grove near the loft, and even colliding with the aircraft of the adjacent base.
“Yet there was no suggestion that the Signal Corps ought to drop pigeons from its list of communications means. By mid-summer, the Pigeon Breeding and Training Center was able to report progress. The experiments as yet had no tactical value since their range had not got beyond a dozen miles, but the trainers had accustomed an increasing number of birds to fly at any hour and to cover a two-way course at six in the afternoon, a good meal providing the spur.
“At the close of the breeding season all the pigeons lent by civilian owners were returned, and thenceforward the Signal Corps bought birds at two dollars apiece. In nine months during 1941, the center bred and shipped out 2,150 to tactical units everywhere.”
“Pigeons, for example, received considerable use in this theater of war. [North Africa] Before the birds can be used in any situation, their home loft must remain in one place at least a week before they will settle there, having become so familiar with the location that they return to it invariably. Three lofts of the North African Pigeon Platoon, part of the 829th Signal Service Battalion, were located early in 1943 at Constantine, Tebessa, and Sbeitla.
“Pigeons homing on a loft at Beja in northern Tunisia were employed for a period of seventeen days during campaigns in the vicinity. During this time birds that had been parceled out to the front-line units brought back seventy-two important messages and many less urgent ones. In some cases they got the message through first, as upon the retaking of Fafsa in March during the southern Tunisia Campaign.
“The first complete report of the recapture reached the Corps headquarters carried by the pig
eon ‘Yank’ returning to the home loft near Tebessa, having made the 90-mile flight from Gafsa in 110 minutes. It was the first report to arrive because wire had not yet caught up with the advancing troops and because a radio net had not yet been established. Pigeons could be valuable during the periods of radio silence, especially if at the same time wire lines happened to be incomplete or out of action.”
Source: The United States Army in World War 2, Technical Services, Signal Corps, The Emergency (to Dec.1941) by Dulany Terrett Stock Number: 008-029-00048-2 Price: $26.00 Price (non-U.S.): $32.50 Description: CMH Pub. 10-16. L.C. card 56-60002. Item 345. Publisher: Defense Dept., Army, Office of the Chief of Military History Year/pages: 1956: 383 p.; ill., plate. Center of Military History Publication 10-16 SuDocs Class: D 114.7:SI 2/V.1 ISBN: 0-16-001898-6 Author: Terrett, Dulany
Pigeon paraphernalia
[Bruce Sterling remarks: We’ve had a gratifying response to the recent flurry on pigeons. Paratroop vests, clockwork canisters, specialty carbon paper, pigeon lingerie: the historical footprints of the pigeon-as-medium appear all over the world. Perhaps the following squibs will encourage some Necronaut to supply us with some accurate, thoroughly cited data on the material support system for military pigeons. It would be especially good to know something about the badges, mottos and battle dress of the various pigeon services of World Wars One and Two. I would also remind researchers that India’s “Orissa Police Pigeon Service” apparently still exists.]
The Dead Media Notebook Page 51
