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"I don't know why I write science fiction. The voices in my head told me to!"
- Charles Stross
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| Bounce Tube | ||
| A people-sized pneumatic tube system used for short, quick trips in the vertical dimension. |
Didn't I see these used on the Jetsons? That show premiered in 1962; I think the original version shows the family using some sort of pneumatic tube in place of an elevator.
| On arrival I decided to forego the main entrance and took a bounce tube from the sub-basement to the twenty-first floor, I having at the time a vague feeling that this was not the place to let my public recognize me. |
| Technovelgy from Double Star,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Doubleday in 1956 Additional resources -
|
It's kind of a pneumatic tube for people. The biggest problems I can see are 1) maintaining pressure in the tube and 2) exiting the tube. Pressure behind the traveling capsule is maintained by virtue of the capsule having a collar that is in effect a gasket the same diameter as the inner diameter of the tube. Few people would choose to wear such a thing. As far as exiting the system is concerned, in an actual "tube room" (I worked in one while working my way through college), pneumatic tubes are unceremoniously dumped into a padded bin. Not a very dignified form of arrival.
This may be a "rediscovery" idea by Heinlein; the concept was originally proposed by George Medhurst, a London businessman in the early nineteenth century. His second proposal in 1812 was for a system that delivered people!
Compare to dropshaft from Deeper than the Darkness (1957) by Harlan Ellison.
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'You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard...'
''OVERRIDE,' the City Fathers said suddenly, without being asked anything at all.'
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'... the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being.'
'Waldo put his arms into the primary pair before him; all three pairs, including the secondary pair mounted before the machine, came to life.'
'... the glittering little rocket bolted to the black iron behind him.'
'The slender stalks of a sunshade-photocell collector...'
