THE MODERN WHIRL

Evening Star, Issue 23351, 22 August 1939, Page 2

THE MODERN WHIRL

NEW YORK SPEEDS ITS MAIL The Postal Department has alway* been a romantic figure in the American scene. It has been the linchpih around which many a movie, dtama, and best seller has rotated. Down through the years the pony express, the old horse-drawn stage coach, and the modern streamline trains and aeroplanes have made legions of heart* pulse more quickly. Wood-burning locomotives and side-wheelers of other days have had the arresting _ word* “ XJ.S. Mail ” painted upon their sides. But none or these methods or mail transportation has quite the fascination of the network of pneumatic tubes which lie under the sidewalks in most of the key cities of America. In New York these tubes form a belt line running two ways in a great oval loop. New York receives, delivers; and despatches 14,500,000 pieces of ordinary mail, 132,000 pieces of registered matter, 72,000 parcel post packages, and 200,0001 b of newspapers and periodicals daily. A letter picked up from the drop at the General Post Office is immediately put through the great cancelling machine—which works at the rate or 000 letters a minute—and timed and dated with the station designation. Next the mail is sorted and each half-hour the signal is given to tie the mail into small bundles, each labeHed with the clerk’s number and initial. From here what are termed the “slugs” (large packages), as well as the first class mail, are passed) into tha centre of a forbidding grey steel affair, which extends nearly the block length of the Post Office, and is termed by tbs staff “ the battleship.” Upon its different platforms a crossing series of nine rotary belts carry everything that is mailed. With amaning skill, employees select and skid these pieces into apertures which end up at the dispatcher's platform, from whence containers start on their journeys packed with mail. Through pneumatic tubes located 4ft to 6ft below the surface of the city streets, these cylindrical steel containers are forced' by compressed air. The containers look somewhat like ordinary milk cans. Tin in diameter and 20in long Air pressure impels them at the rate of 30 to 35 miles an hour. They are despatched by a time lock, ami a designating card is forced l into a slot on the top of the container as it is slipped into the tube. lt_ is reVeff again and again until it arrives at the proper station.