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LM: #295: Pneus for you
In Paris in the 1800s, if you wanted to “text” a friend, you’d send them a note in a pneumatic tube.
Yes, the kind the teller used to send you a lollipop when your mom drove-through at the bank.
This old and primitive tech was drastically affected by new tech. The electric telegraph quickly connected the globe, just by sending short electrical charges through a wire. Once the transcontinental telegraph was installed in the U.S., the Pony Express, which could send a message from New York to San Francisco in two weeks, went out of business in two days.
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But the electric telegraph didn’t cause reduced demand for pneumatic tubes. It caused demand to skyrocket.
Once a telegram reached a station, it needed to be printed out and delivered to its destination. The streets became jammed with messengers. But pneumatic tubes could send messages more efficiently than wires or people.
Networks of tubes sprang up in major cities around the world, such as New York, Rio, and London. But Paris’s was the most extensive.
Once the network was in place, yet another piece of old tech rose in demand: hand-written notes. Electric telegrams, you had to pay for by the letter. These telegrams were printed on paper anyway, so Paris’s Pneumatic Post offered these little blue notes.
For one low price, you could write anything you could fit on one of these notes. It would get across town in a couple hours. If someone sent you one of these notes, they were sending you “pneus.”
We expect new tech to decrease demand for old tech, but sometimes it has the opposite effect.
Computers in offices increased demand for paper. The internet has increased demand for shipping. Music streaming services have increased demand for vinyl.
You can bet that while AI decreases demand for some things, it will increase demand for others.
Book: Cattle Kingdom (Amazon) tells the story of the gold rush that was cattle farming in the wild, wild, western U.S.
Cool: This Fluance turntable (Amazon) is a great introduction to audiophile-level vinyl-record listening.
Best,
David
P.S. I’ve created reels of this story on Instagram and TikTok.
