Snail Mail in Europe

On Mon, 30 May 2011 18:02:10 -0400, James Silverton wrote in post :
:

I am reminded of a Sherlock Holmes story where he sent a reply to a
letter he received in London in the morning. He was invited to dinner
and he assumed his reply would be received by his hostess in the
afternoon. Fast delivery then was more important in the absence of
phones in Mr Holmes' time.

Didn't London's post use pneumatic tubes to send mail from station to
station back then?

--
Dave Hatunen, Tucson, Baja Arizona, out where the cacti grow

On 5/31/2011 3:30 PM, David Hatunen wrote:
On Mon, 30 May 2011 18:02:10 -0400, James Silverton wrote in post :
:

I am reminded of a Sherlock Holmes story where he sent a reply to a
letter he received in London in the morning. He was invited to dinner
and he assumed his reply would be received by his hostess in the
afternoon. Fast delivery then was more important in the absence of
phones in Mr Holmes' time.

Didn't London's post use pneumatic tubes to send mail from station to
station back then?

I don't know about that but I believe Paris did have a pneumatic service.

--


James Silverton, Potomac

I'm *not*

James Silverton:
I am reminded of a Sherlock Holmes story where he sent a reply to a
letter he received in London in the morning. He was invited to dinner
and he assumed his reply would be received by his hostess in the
afternoon. Fast delivery then was more important in the absence of
phones in Mr Holmes' time.

Dave Hatunen:
Didn't London's post use pneumatic tubes to send mail from station to
station back then?

James Silverton:
I don't know about that but I believe Paris did have a pneumatic service.

London, Paris, New York, and quite a number of other cities had this
system, but they didn't all use it for ordinary mail. What I've read
is that in London it was used for telegrams (which, as in many European
countries, were also a Post Office function).

London also had the Pneumatic Despatch Railway, which was the same idea
on a larger scale, with air pushing unmanned trains through tunnels
30 inches across. This was used for the purpose Dave describes, but
it only operated for a few years around 1870. In the 20th century
they built the Post Office Railway, later renamed MailRail, which had
similarly sized unmanned underground trains, but electrically powered.
This entered service in 1927 and was used until 2003, when it was
shut down because it no longer served the right locations for the
current flow of mail. A few other cities have had similar systems.

ObTravel: Last month while in Switzerland, I bought some postage
stamps to send postcards to friends and family. Everyone knows that
the Swiss put the name of the country on stamps in Latin because there
isn't room for all four national languages. But I was interested to
see that on these particular stamps, the *caption for the illustration*
was also in Latin only. The stamps depicted birds, so they simply
identified the species by giving its scientific name!
--
Mark Brader "The routes 'London' and 'not London' are
Toronto not necessarily mutually exclusive."
--Tim Stevens for ATOC, UK

My text in this article is in the public domain.