The series of tubes filled with enormous amounts of mail, beneath our feet<br>Buttondown<br>Pricing<br>Log in<br>Build your newsletterSign up

The series of tubes filled with enormous amounts of mail, beneath our feet<br>Email can learn a lot from the rise, fall, and quiet continuation of pneumatic tubes.

Ryan Farley

June 26, 2026

blockquote>p]:py-2 [&>blockquote>p:only-child]:py-10 prose-blockquote:!px-8 prose-blockquote:not-italic [&>blockquote>p:only-child]:text-center [&>blockquote>p:only-child]:font-bold [&_blockquote_a]:text-current [&_blockquote_a]:underline my-8 mx-auto prose-img:border prose-img:border-border prose-img:rounded-lg prose-img:mx-auto prose-img:transition-colors [&_img.cursor-zoom-in:hover]:border-muted-foreground lg:!max-w-[calc(65ch)] [&_li>code]:inline-block [&_li>code]:px-1.5 [&_li>code]:mx-1.5 [&_li>code]:bg-gray-200 [&_li>code]:before:hidden [&_li>code]:after:hidden [&_li>code]:rounded-md [&_p>code]:px-1.5 [&_p>code]:mx-1.5 [&_p>code]:bg-gray-200 dark:[&_p>code]:bg-zinc-800 dark:[&_p>code]:text-white dark:[&_p>code]:border dark:[&_p>code]:border-zinc-700 dark:[&_p>code]:leading-[32px] [&_p>code]:before:hidden [&_p>code]:after:hidden [&_p>code]:rounded-md [&_p>code]:break-all [&_table]:bg-sidebar [&_table]:-mx-4 [&_table]:border [&_table]:outline-muted [&_table]:outline [&_table]:border-collapse [&_table]:border-solid [&_table]:mx-auto [&_table]:my-8 [&_table]:overflow-hidden [&_table]:rounded-lg [&_table]:shadow-md [&_table]:text-md [&_table]:w-full [&_td>p]:my-1.5 [&_td]:!px-4 [&_td]:font-system [&_th>p]:my-1.5 [&_th]:!p-2 [&_th]:text-sm [&_th]:!px-4 [&_th]:bg-card [&_th]:text-left [&_thead]:border-border [&_tr]:border-border break-words prose-a:text-blue-600 [&_a:hover]:bg-blue-500/20 prose-hr:mb-14 prose-hr:border-border prose-hr:mx-20 dark:prose-strong:text-white dark:prose-headings:text-foreground dark:text-foreground [&_small>p]:text-sm [&_small_thead]:hidden [&_small_td:last-child]:text-right [&_.caption]:text-sm [&_.caption]:text-muted-foreground [&_.caption]:text-center [&_.caption]:mt-8 [&_.caption]:-mb-4">Sending a telegraph from downtown to uptown Manhattan took up to an hour, according to an article from 1897. That same message carried across town by courier could make the journey in 33 minutes. There was a third option, though. One that was eight times faster than hand delivery and 15 times faster than a crosstown telegraph.<br>A postcard placed atop a pile of 500 letters tucked inside an 8-inch diameter tube, sealed and loaded by a “Rocketeer” from the Tubular Dispatch Company, could be whisked away by 8psi of air pressure into a network of tubes buried five feet beneath New York City sidewalks. This pneumatic mail carried letters and postcards along at 35mph, traveling from origin to destination in under five minutes.<br>Pneumatic tubes, like email, were touted as the quintessence of human communication. Postmaster General Charles Emory Smith couldn’t imagine anything better and, in 1900, predicted the tubes would one day link every household to each other. There were plans to build a connection across the Atlantic, where pneumatic dispatch already handled mail in London, Paris, and Berlin. At NASA, air-powered tubes were used to send messages from backoffice support to mission control. The CIA’s pneumatic tubes ferried more than 7,500 intraoffice messages back and forth, every day. And as recently as 2011, the soft hiss of a pneumatic tube would accompany the arrival of your child’s Happy Meal at a McDonald’s in Minnesota.<br>Like a Swiss Army knife that can handle any job poorly, pneumatic tubes thrived for nearly half a century as the go-to solution for all the wrong problems. And I think that’s interesting, in part, because of all the things email and pneumatic mail have in common, including their frequent misappropriation.<br>Sending over-the-air email<br>While telegraphs charged extra for messages longer than 10 words, pneumatic mail was mostly flat rate. It didn’t matter whether there was one word or one thousand scrawled on your postcard. Anything that fit into the standardized container was OK to send, even if it wasn’t even text. Reminiscent of the tongue-in-cheek barbershop quartet audio file that marked the first-ever email attachment, the inaugural demonstration of pneumatic mail in New York shipped a Bible wrapped in an American flag, followed by an oversized toy peach, and concluded, sadly, with the underground journey of a live cat (allegedly unharmed by the journey).<br>Telegraphs could never match the scale of “mail shot from guns” (as one USPS described the tubes) because telegraphs required two people for every message: one person to convert it into morse code and type it out, then another person to receive and decode it. Pneumatic tubes–once in the ground, connected to air pressure, and lubricated by a perforated “decoy projectile” filled with oil–needed only two people for every 500 messages. Running at full tilt, Rocketeers could sling five full canisters per minute,...