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"My feeling is that the chance of our surviving into the twenty-first century as working civilization is less than fifty percent but greater than zero."
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![]() The logistics of the city were quite advanced; delivery was accomplished without human intervention.
The idea of using this kind of tube on a larger scale for transportation of people rather than things was quite popular. Compare to the shorter range bounce tube from Robert Heinlein's 1956 story Double Star. See also the single vehicle tunnel from Foundation (1951) by Isaac Asimov, the
submarine tube from An Express of the Future (1895) by Jules Verne, the
sub-Atlantic tube from Ralph 124c 41 + (1911) by Hugo Gernsback, the tubecar from The Faceless Men (1948) by Leo Zagat, the
vacutubes from Double Star (1956) by Robert Heinlein and the public tubes from The Houses of Iszm (1954) by Jack Vance.
The concept of pneumatic tubes as a means of delivering freight was not created by science fiction authors; it was originally proposed by George Medhurst, a London businessman in the early nineteenth century. Pneumatic tube systems were commonplace in the first part of the twentieth century in large buildings, or interconnected locations like hospitals. I occasionally worked in a hospital tube room in the early 1970's; it was used to take doctor's orders to remote locations like the pharmacy, as well as send (carefully wrapped) blood samples to labs for analysis. It was effectively a way station. Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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