Pneumatic Tube Communication In Hospitals

blee37 sends along a writeup from the School of Medicine at Stanford University on their pneumatic tube delivery system, used for sending atoms not bits. Such systems are in use in hospitals nationwide; the 19th-century technology is enhancd by recent refinements in pneumatic braking. "Every day, 7,000 times a day, Stanford Hospital staff turn to pneumatic tubes, cutting-edge technology in the 19th century, for a transport network that the Internet and all the latest Silicon Valley wizardry can't match: A tubular system to transport a lab sample across the medical center in the blink of an eye."

Comments

Re:Used in other places, too

[GKThursday]

Instead, his buddy stood in front of an open pneumatic tube, mesmerized by a 9-foot-long python that had escaped from one of the labs above.

I would just tell the company that they had upgraded the routing computer using python.