A certain form of transportation was invented by a prolific Scottish inventor in the early 19th century, and the last such city-wide network operated in Prague until 2002. What is this method of transport, who was the inventor and where did the most extensive network of this type run?

lanfranco

I think you must be talking about Murdoch's pneumatic tube system. Prague's was badly damaged by the 2002 floods (my niece was there, and she had been fascinated by the system); London had a large system, and America tried one, too. This site gives information on other attempts. When my father was a newspaper editor, I was left agog by the pneumatic tubes into which he and his colleagues placed their rolled-up edited copy so as to send it to the press room for setting and printing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube Jan 22 07, 8:15 PM

gmackematix

Yay Frankie! In this age of cyberspace I think there's still something quite satisfying about the idea of sending a real object a mile or two in a few minutes using only circulating air. Jan 22 07, 8:38 PM

queproblema

You might want to know a bit more about Wm. Murdoch. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Murdoch Frankie, what do you mean by, "America tried one, too"? A large, universal system like Prague's? I never heard of that. We do still have them at most drive-up teller windows. My father would let me drop samples and reports in the pneumatic tube in his lab. That was more fun than his frogs, his bucket of mercury, or his IBM Selectric typewriter. Somehow I still think we could exploit this technology better for parcels. Jan 23 07, 11:15 AM