STURTEVANTS were a competitor of Lamsons during the 1930s and 1940s. They were another offshoot of an American company and bought part of Reid Brothers concerned with pneumatic despatch in the early 1920s. They also bought the pneumatic tube business of Cooke, Troughton and Simms. In 1949 they sold their pneumatic tube interests to Lamson Engineering (Times, 27 April 1950).

The photograph on the left is part of a steam-driven ventilating fan made in 1920 and now in the Discovery Museum, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Interestingly, the Lamson factory was heated and ventilated by Sturtevant equipment in 1890.

Block A of Bletchley Park ("Station X") was to be equipped with Sturtevant tubes for carrying pieces of paper between rooms, "probably at the suggestion of Hugh Alexander who had installed the system in the John Lewis stores where he worked as Chief Scientist pre-war". (Bletchley Park website)

Sturtevant terminal against a stanchion casing in a linoleum department (Hammond)

The central cash desk for 75 stations at John Banners, Sheffield, installed by Sturtevant Engineering Co. Ltd. The discharge tubes feed into four chutes and the return tubes are in the background, operated by another clerk.(Photograph from Hammond)