Chapter 23: An Electric Postal System

Far swifter than the movements of air are those of the electric current, which travels many thousands of miles in a second of time.

Thirty miles an hour is the speed proposed for the pneumatic tube system mentioned in our last chapter. An Italian, Count Roberto Taeggi Piscicelli, has elaborated an electric post which, if realised, will make such a velocity as that seem very slow motion indeed.

Cable railways, for the transmission of minerals, are in very common use all over the world. At Hong-Kong and elsewhere they do good service for the transport of human beings. The car or truck is hauled along a stout steel cable, supported at intervals on strong poles of wood or metal, by an endless rope wound off and on to a steam-driven drum at one end of the line, or motion is imparted to it by a motor, which picks up current as it goes from the cable itself and other wires with which contact is made.

Count Piscicelli’s electric post is an adaptation of the electric cableway to the needs of parcel and letter distribution.

At present the mail service between towns is entirely dependent on the railway for considerable distances, and on motors and horsed vehicles in cases where only a comparatively few miles intervene. London and Birmingham, to take an instance, are served by seven despatches each way every twenty-four hours. A letter sent from London in the morning would, under the most favourable conditions, not bring an answer the same day--at least, not during business hours. So that urgent correspondence must be conducted over either the telephone or the telegraph wires.

Count Piscicelli proposes a network of light cableways--four lines on a single set of supports--between the great towns of Britain. Each line--or rather track--consists of four wires, two above and two below, each pair on the same level. The upper pair form the run-way for the two main wheels of the carrier; the lower pair are for the trailing wheels. Three of the wires supply the three-phase current which drives the carrier; the fourth operates the automatic switches installed every three or four miles for transforming the high-tension 5,000-volt current into low-tension 500-volt current in the section just being entered.

The carriers would be suitable for letters, book-parcels, and light packages. The speed at which they would move--150 miles per hour to begin with--would render possible a ten-minute service between, say, the towns already mentioned. The inventor has hopes of increasing the speed to 250 m.p.h., a velocity which would appear visionary had we not already before us the fact that an electric car, weighing many tons, has already been sent over the Berlin-Zossen Railway at 131-1/2 miles per hour. At any rate, the electric post can reasonably be expected to outstrip the ordinary express train. “Should such speeds as Count Piscicelli confidently discusses,” says The World’s Work, “be attained, they would undoubtedly confer immense benefits upon the mercantile and agricultural community--upon the agricultural community because in this system is to be found that avenue of transmission to big centres of population of the products of la petite culture, in which Mr. Rider Haggard, for example, in his invaluable book on Rural England, sees help for the farmer and for all connected with the cultivation of the soil. Count Piscicelli proposes to obviate the delays at despatching and receiving towns by an inter-urban postal system, in which the principal offices of any city would be connected with the head-office and with the principal railway termini. From each of the sub-offices would radiate further lines, along which post-collecting pillars are erected, and over which lighter motors and collecting boxes (similar to the despatch boxes) travel. The letter is put in through a slot and the stamp cancelled by an automatic apparatus with the name of the district, number of the post, and time of posting. The letter then falls into a box at the foot of the column. On the approach of a collecting-box the letter slot would be closed, and by means of an electric motor the receptacle containing the letters lifted to the top of the column and its contents deposited in the collecting-box, which travels alone past other post-collecting poles, taking from each its toll, and so on to the district office. Here, in a mercantile centre, a first sorting takes place, local letters being retained for distribution by postmen, and other boxes carry their respective loads to the different railway termini, or central office.”

Were such an order of things established, there would be a good excuse for the old country woman who sat watching the telegraph wire for the passage of a pair of boots she was sending to her son in far away “Lunnon”!