Cable systems

The carrier is a small cash box which slides along tracks. It is propelled by a continuous cable, driven by a steam or water engine and later by an electric motor. The tracks are rather intrusive but the design looks quite elegant in the photograph. Above the stations the carriage passed over a ramp or else dropped down vertically to the counter. The position of the clamp on the box identified which station it belonged to.

Joseph C. Martin of Vermont patented a system of this kind in 1882 and George Amsden of Massachusetts, assignor to the Lamson Company, in 1916 (see below). They seem to have been popular in the USA and are referred to at several of the Locations in the United States but I have not come across any examples in Britain. There are photographs showing an electric system at C.O.Millers store on the Stamford History website. The article by Liffen has a drawing of a Lamson cable carrier. The best late survival was Joyner's at Moose Jaw, Canada.

The history of Belks, Charlotte N.C. by Covington describes the system there before it was replaced by pneumatic tubes. "They placed the sales ticket and the customer's payment in a wire basket that was carried along greased wire guidelines directed by a series of pulleys to the cashiers' desk... This contraption, called the Lamson system, provided a constant background noise of whirring and clicking as the baskets zipped through various intersections... The occasional derailment of a basket brought everything to a halt until a clerk climbed a ladder to right the misdirected carrier." There is a photograph showing part of a system similar to the one below. Although the carriers are called "wire baskets" the description fits a cable system rather than a cash basket system.

	Photograph of the Abraham and Straus Department Store, Brooklyn from J. BYRON New York interiors at the turn of the century.
	Byron's photograph was the inspiration for the reconstruction at Disneyland Paris. The glass box is no doubt to keep out little fingers!