[GreenKeys] 1940 Britih Teleprinter film

David Wade dave.g4ugm at gmail.com
Thu Aug 20 03:14:55 EDT 2026



On 19/08/2026 22:31, Harold Hallikainen via GreenKeys wrote:
> Thanks for posting! That machine is a lot different from a model 15. Of
> course, they did not show anything about message routing (possibly torn
> tape). The pneumatic tube system was fun. When I was in college, there was
> a department store that used a tube system between the sales floor and the
> cashiers upstairs. The salesperson would put the sales info and cash into
> a cannister to go upstairs where the sale would be recorded and sales sent
> back downstairs.
In my first job I worked at Refuge Assurance, Manchester, in what is now 
the Kimpton Hotel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimpton_Clocktower_Hotel

the building had a tube system with tubes to many locations, each of 
which had a "station number", all of which terminated in what what known 
as the "Tube Room"
Each tube had a ring with a pointer on it, which could be rotated to 
point to a station number. So if you wanted to send an urgent memo, you 
popped it in a tube, looked up the station number of the department you 
wanted to send it to, and popped it into the local tube station.

When it popped out in the Tube Room some poor girl read the number and 
popped it in the tube for that station....

the building was interesting in other ways. Originally the lifts were 
powered by the Manchester Hydraulic Power network and heated by waste 
heat from a power station.

The part of the building now used as a casino also has a ballroom with a 
sprung floor..

> Harold
> https://w6iwi.org
>
>
>
>
Dave
G4UGM


More information about the GreenKeys mailing list