Author: MEDHURST, G
Title: Calculations and Remarks, tending to prove the Practicability, Effects and Advantages of a Plan for the Rapid Conveyance of Goods and Passengers upon an Iron Road through a Tube of 30 Feet in Area, by the Power and Velocity of Air
Description: London, D.N.Shury, 1812, First edition. Paperback. 18+(2) pp. No images. Conditie: Good, First edtion, half-title, advertisement leaf at end, some light spotting and soiling, ex-library copy with old ink stamp at head of half-title and foot of title, sewn in original blue wrappers, soiled and frayed, preserved in modern cloth drop-back box. First proposal for an atmospheric railway . Medhurst proposed an airtight tube made of "iron, brick, timber, or any material that will confine the air 6 feet high, and 5 wide [which] will admit of the carriage wheels to be 5 feet 10 inches in diameter, which must turn four times round in a second to go fifty miles per hour". The carriage was to be only slightly smaller than the tunnel. Although his scheme was never built he foreshadows the system developed by Samuda and I.K.Brunel which involved "a tube made of iron twelve inches in diameter, having a moving box or piston to fit and move freely within side"` and which had the advantage that the passengers would be "unconfined, and in view of the country". It was a large scale version of the pneumatic tube systems later used over many years for cash transportation in large retail stores. .

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