Too Long; Didn't Read

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.