Fiction, films, cartoons, etc.

ADE, G. In Babel: stories of Chicago. (New York: McClure Phillips, 1903), p.18. "He [Markley] had thought out an overhead cash-carrier of the kind used in retail stores."

ALLIN, Linda. Daddy's girl. (Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2005), p.43. "It was one of those old-fashioned stores .. Wooden floors, dark showcases and metal cash capsules that whirred on overhead wires to the cashier, who sat in the middle of the sales floor."

BANVILLE, John. Mefisto. (Godine, 1999) p.91 "The wooden cylinders on the overhead cables whizzed back and forth from the cash office."

BATES, Ralph. Lean men: an episode in a life. (London: Davies, 1935) p.350. "A cluster of sparrows whirled over like the cash railway at the Century Stores in the Rambla."

Beesweb - the official site of Richard Thompson. "The dry, thick smell of haberdashery and clothing, and the faint whiff of friction from the centralized cash system, with its vacuum tubes and overhead cables. Beesweb

The Big Store, Marx Brothers film directed by Charles Riesner, 1941. Harpo Marx descends from a gallery on a tray-shaped carrier running on four wires. This is obviously not a cash carrier but it may have been inspired by one.

BRAILSFORD, Henry Noel. The broom of the war-god: a novel. (Heinemann, 1898) p.137. "'Queer noise, ain't it though? It's like an over'ead cash railway in a draiper's shop', said Simson."

Brazil, film directed by Terry Gilliam, 1985. (Not a shop system.) Sam Lowry, played by Jonathan Pryce, works in the Ministry of Information. An 'in' and 'out' tube sit side-by-side next to his desk. He decides to sabotage the pneumatic tube system by stuffing outgoing carriers with wads of paper and plugging up the tubes which bulge and then explode.(Filmsite)

BURGESS, Gelett. A little sister of destiny. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906), p.74 "Through all this confusion was woven, like a spider's web, a radial system of wires, converging at the cashier's window. Along these airy tracks the carriers sped, to stop with a snap above the cashier's head, waiting for her to make change and shoot them back."

CHAVE, Louise. Harvest of hope. (Xlibris, 2000), p.66. "It was fascinating to watch a sales clerk put his payment in a little box with the sales slip before sending it scooting up and onto an overhead cable to a balcony. There a clerk emptied the contents, inserted the correct change and sent it back to the sales clerk."

Cluefinders: the incredible toy store adventure. "A rat chases the shrunken Cluefinders inside pneumatic tubes." (Computing with Kids) - not clear whether these tubes were intended for carrying cash.

Daily Chronicle, 18 July 1924. "Paying at the desk". Cartoon strip bemoaning the demise of the Cash Ball system in the name of "progress".

DONOVAN, Frances R. The saleslady. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1929). p.21 "She [the trainer] tells us in detail when to send the money to the cashier in a gray carrier, when in a red or blue one, which form to put into the carrier." p. 24 "My first sale completed, I make out the check, tear off the triplicate .. and, as it is a 'Cash taken', send it merrily up the compressed air shute in a gray carrier."

Experiment perilous. "There was a very fine sequence.. that was cut out: it took place in a department store, with the old baskets with the wires for delivering money. It showed Hedy Lamarr followed by a detective." Jacques Tourneur: The cinema of nightfall, by Chris Fujiwara (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 1988)

Firebird, ed. Robin Robertson. vol.3. (Penguin, 1984) p.12 "The wooden cylinders on the overhead cables whizzed back and forth from the cash office."

Floorwalker. Charlie Chaplin film, 1916. Set in a department store with cash office on the mezzanine. Two lines with cash baskets. Chaplin operates one in a stunt with a top hat.

FREEMAN, Gillian. The marriage machine: a novel. (London: Hamilton, 1975) p.36 "Harvey's .. was even then an old-fashioned department store with a pulley system for dealing with the cashier... We would watch her fascinated as she inserted them [her finger-nails] into the crevices between the brass cylinders which shot along the overhead wires into her booth, and then, having prised the two halves apart, would manage to keep her nails clear of the whole business of working the till and wrapping up the change in a Harvey's pale green receipt. "

From dawn to sunset. Film produced by the Handy (Jam) Organization and sponsored by Chevrolet Division, General Motors Corp., 1937. The film depicts a day in the life of Chevrolet workers in the US. One scene is of change being made in a department store office and returned by an Air-Line system. Internet Archive

GOLDBERG, Myra. Wickett's Remedy: a novel. (Doubleday, 2005) . "Even after four years, she thrilled at sealing a customer's payment into a pneumatic capsule and sending it to the cashier for change. Miles and miles of pneumatic tubing crisscrossed Gilchrist's walls and ceilings. Capsules left Men's Furnishings on a current of compressed air to travel over Silks and Velvets, over Embroideries and Trimmings, past Veilings, and past Black and Colored Dress Goods. Lydia pictured her customers' sales slips speeding past countergirls whispering among themselves in Millinery, past the solitary salesgirl at Umbrellas who every day prayed for rain.
Lydia once visited the Cashier's Office just to see the veritable pipe organ of commerce where each capsule arrived with a thunk, its contents scrutinized by a woman whose hands must have smelled always of money. Lydia wondered if the woman scrubbed the scent from her skin at night, or if her dreams glimmered with visions of wealth. Whenever Lydia retrieved the returning capsules containing a customer's correct change, she felt the cold, dry breath of the pneumatic tube on the back of her hand. On slow days she listened to the exhalations of the tubes behind her counter. After four years, she still marveled at the notion that money pumped through the store no less fervently than blood through her own veins."

Grocery Clerk. Larry Semon. "He's running the store alone, so he has to send off the basket, then race ahead to meet it." (Posting to alt.movies.silent newsgroup, 3 Apr. 2004)

Gymnasium Jim, Max Sennett film directed by Roy del Ruth, 1922. Jack Cooper's top hat lowers and rises like a drawbridge every time the basket whizzes over his head. (Brent Walker, posting to alt.movies.silent, 5 Apr. 2004)

The History of Mr Polly, film of the H.G.Wells book directed by Anthony Pelissier, 1949. At the start Polly, played by John Mills, is dismissed from his post in a department store with several views of a Rapid Wire system being used. Screenshot

HOWELL, John Wingspread. Naked in church: a novel (New York: Writers Club, 2003) p.17. "Harrington owned the town's only department store, though Harrington Dry Goods was les than half the size of the Wal-Mart... He planned to restore the vintage character of his antiquated store (keeping the pneumatic tubes that had been used continuously since the store's opening in the last century, for instance)."

HUDSON, Lois Phillips. Bones of plenty. (Little, Brown, 1962) p.52. "He flinched as one of the little change carriers whizzed over his head, so close that he could feel its breeze parting his hair. A damned store for women... Vick shouted above the noise of the little cash carriers coming home."

KAMINSKI, Gerald. Wooden nickels. (Coveview Press, 1993) p.6 "She could never take anything but the most childlike delight in the still operative cashier system. A web of wires from the various sales counters all led up to the accounting office on a small balcony at the rear of the store. Spring catapulted money flasks were zinged ion trolleys up the wires to the central cashier, who made change or recorded the transaction." Ibid. p.7 "He grasped the wooded [sic] handle on the launch cord... After a firm tug on the cord, the catapult spring zinged the trolley up to the cashier. Up on the balcony, the cashier fumbled about for a while. Finally the trolley skittered back down the wire and thunked to a halt."

KELLAND, Clarence Budington. Scattergood Baines (New York: Harper, 1921) p.258. Jason Locker, who was Sam Kettleman's rival in Coldriver's grocery industry, was a trifle too amenable to modern ideas at times... He installed a perfectly unnecessary cash carrier from the counter to a desk where Mrs Locker made change."

Kind hearts and coronets, film directed by Robert Hammer. Ealing Studios, 1949. Due to family circumstances, Louis Mazzini (played by Dennis Price) has to take a job in a draper's shop and is seen using a wire system. He then moves up to a larger establishment fitted with pneumatic tubes.

LARRABEE, Kathryn. An everyday savior. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows. ch.1 "The store is a tourist attraction; I took Sonia there to show her the pulley system used to make change, the small wooden cups speeding across the ceiling to a central cage with a cashier, then speeding back to the salesperson at the counter." Based on Lowns, Penn Yan.

LEWIS, Ann. Christmas shopping in Ceridwen Street in Best of British, Dec. 2006, pp.32-33. "On the rare occasions when I' d visited the shop with Mum, I'd watched fascinated as the assistant took money from the customer and folding the notes, placed them inside a small round wooden container. This would then be secured with a screw top, and clipped to a metal contraption just above his head. A sharp tug on the pull-cord would send the thing whizzing across to the other side of the shop to the cashier, whereupon minutes later it would return with the right change." [Described as W. Prosser, Gents Outfitters, Ceridwen High Street.]

Life with father, film directed by Michael Curtiz, 1947. Vinnie Day (Irene Dunne) goes on a spending spree to James McCreery & Co. in New York with her four sons. There is a good view of the ornate wooden balcony with wire carriers arriving and being despatched. Wires, carriers and a propulsion (?Air-Line) can be seen and heard as they walk around the store. The propulsion appears to be mounted on the counter. One of the sons asks if he can work the propulsion and the sales clerk says "It's against the rules."

The Longest night, film directed by Errol Taggart, produced by Lucien Hubbard and Samuel Marx. MGM, 1936. Eve (played by Julie Haydon)and Mr Grover [employees in a store] disappear, then the watch and a tack from the furniture department come in the pneumatic tubes and Joan realises they are a message from Eve.

Love nest on wheels, film with Buster Keaton. Features a Rapid Wire system.

The Magic Box, film directed by John Boulting for the Festival of Britain, 1951. Starred Robert Donat as William Friese-Greene, British pioneer of the cinema. His second wife works in the glove department of a department store where there is a Lamson Rapid Wire system.

MATTHEW, Christopher. A nightingale sang in Fernhurst Road: a schoolboy's journal of 1945. (London:Murray, 1998). p.26 "Afterwards we went to the Co-op. I like going there because when you pay, they put the money into a special little can which they attach to a wire on the ceiling and then they pull a wooden handle on the end of a chain and the can goes flying across the ceiling on the wire to the lady in the cashier's desk...Mummy says it's an example of modern science and reckons that one day all shops will have it." (Set in Oxted, Surrey)

MORLEY, Christopher. Where the blue begins. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1922) ch. 6 "He heard the soft sigh of the pneumatic tubes as they received money and blew it to some distant coffer."

MUSSON, Bennet. Cupid and the cash carrier. Newark [Ohio] Daily Advocate, 7 Nov. 1903, p.2. A romance conducted with the help of a cable (?) carrier. "Through the great dry goods house of Chase, Remington, Bentley & Co. ranged the usual throng of shoppers... [Mr Remington's] handsome son concluded negotiations with the woman, took a bill from her and, inclosing it in a little nickel plated case, placed it in the receptacle of the cash carrier. He pulled a cord, and the box shot up till it reached the narrow lines of metal, whence it was whisked with business-like precision to the eyrie of the cashier... Presently the nickel plated case shot back over the carrier and dropped with an assertive click into its receptacle... Rimmington senior .. witheld a small piece of folded white paper... Written across it in hastily formed characters were the words: 'It is an age till tomorrow night, dearest!'"

ORWELL, George. Coming up for air. Part II, ch.7 [Referring to Lilywhites, the drapers]. "You know the atmosphere of a draper's shop... A faint whirring from the wooden balls of change rolling to and fro."

PRATCHETT, Terry. Hogfather. A Discworld novel. (London: Gollancz, 1996), p.87 "So that the staff would not be Tempted, Mr Crumley had set up an arrangement of overhead wires across the ceilings of the store. In the middle of each floor was a cashier in a little cage. Staff took money from customers, put it in a little clockwork cable car, sent it whizzing overhead to the cashier, who'd make change and start it rattling back again. Thus there was no possibility of Temptation, and the little trolleys were shooting back and forth like fireworks."

ROWLAND, Marcus L. The clockwork heart. 2002 [role-playing game]. "Lewis Henderson owns Henderson's Emporium, a large department store in Oxford Street... This store is a magical place to any child.. and the infrastructure of pneumatic tubes (used to move papers, bank notes, cheques and receipts around the store).. is endlessly fascinating."

Scribner's Magazine, 1939, p.738 "Little Mary Neland leaned down from her elevated cash-carrier station back of the silk-counter." Ibid, p.743 "Mary Neland was released from weary attendance on the pneumatic cash-carrier."

STOPPARD, Tom. On the razzle. (London: Faber and Faber, 1981), p.11 "Zangler's shop ... Marie is the cashier in a gilded cage. Old-fashioned spring-loaded canisters travel on wires between the cage and the counters."
p.12 ZANGLER: I'm damned sure they're sending messages to each other but I can't work out how they're doing it. (Zing! In the shop - now closed - a cash-canister zings along the wire to Marie in her gilded cage.) ... Sonders, half hidden has sent the canister.
p.75, ZANGLER: Every modern convenience - a spring-loaded cash flow to knock your eye out and your hat off! (He demonstrates the cash canister machine, which knocks Sonder's hat off.)

SYLVAINE, Vernon. Madame Louise: a farce in three acts. (London: Charles Fox, [1946]). [Set in the Madame Louise Gown Shop, well off Bond Street.] Stage directions for Act 1: "Above the desk-table is an old-fashioned cash-change arrangement - with not more than ten feet of runway". Page 15: "MOULD. That, Mr Trout, is the cash change expediter... We're one of the few remaining London houses still retaining a cash expediter."

THOMAS, Dylan. Under Milk Wood. (London: Dent, 1954), p. 6. Mr Edwards: "I am a draper mad with love... I have come to take you away to my Emporium on the hill, where the change hums on wires."

TOWNSEND, Charles B. The world's biggest puzzle book. (New York: Stirling, 2002), p.545. "It's Christmas time in 1902 and the Bartholomew kids have received a Franklin Play Store set complete with toy money, products to sell and an overhead cash carrier." With illustration.

TREVANIAN. Hot night in the city. (St Martin's Press, 2000). "She described her work at JC Penney's where Weaver Overhead Cash Carriers zinged on wires, bringing money and sales slips up to a central nest suspended from the ceiling, and the change came zinging back down to clerks whom the company didn't trust to handle money. She worked up in the cashier's cage, making change and zinging it back down. ...'but most of the stores have modernized and gotten rid of their cash carriers.'" [Weaver may be the inventor in US Patent no. 465,668, 1891.]

TV comedy show (or perhaps a film) in late 1950s/early 1960s. Graham Stark in drag was playing a shop cashier and someone put a bomb in the cash ball, which blew the shop up. (Giles Barnabe)

Tweety and Sylvester cartoon. Set in department store. "The two of them were chasing each other through the store's pneumatic tube setup." (Posting to rec.arts.sf.science newsgroup, 12 Nov. 2001)

UPFIELD, Arthur W. The bachelors of Broken hill. (Scribner, 1984), p.35. "The girl accepted the money as though a gift to herelf, and raced it along the overhead wire to the cashier."

WAGNER. Geoffrey. Red calypso: the Grenadian revolution and its aftermath. (Washington DC: Regnery, 1988) p.14. "There was one emporium full of bolts of cloth called Everybody's, where change for your purchase was run to the cashier on overhead wires."

WELLS, H.G. Kipps: the story of a simple soul.(London: Macmillan, 1905) Book 1, ii. "Shalford withdrew a hand from beneath his coat-tails to indicate an overhead change carrier. He entered into elablorate calculations to show how many minutes in one year were saved thereby." [H.G.Wells was apprenticed to Edwin Hide's Drapery Emporium at Southsea, which is slightly disguised as Edwin Shalford's Drapery Bazaar at Folkestone in 'Kipps' - Mrs Proctor.] Also film of Kipps, 1941, with wire system.

WHITLOCK, Brand. The turn of the balance. (London: Alston Rivers, 1907), p.175. "There the enormous department store of James E. Bills and Company occupied an entire building of five stories high... Many of the women in the store .. spoke in high ugly voices; the noise of their haggling .. added to the din made by the little metal money-boxes that whizzed by on overhead wires."

Wilf's thrilling ride on a "cash-carrier". [Cartoon strip]. Daily Mirror, 3 May 1927, p.11

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