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Email is still popular with Storting employees 150 years after it was put into service.
For more than 150 years, mail has passed through pipes hidden in the walls of the Storting. But if the head of the Storting, Marianne Andreassen, gets what she wants, it will be over.
Sssvisj. Sound. Pious. It roars in the pipes of a basement in the Storting, the central chamber of the pipeline mail system itself, as a cartridge of mail passes, on its way from one building to another.
– And now, now we will send the Constitution, says Marianne Andreassen with devotion in her voice. Wrap a rubber band around a thin red booklet and place it in a cartridge with the same red color on the cover.
– It is fantastic for me to know that now the Constitution itself will go through the walls here. It has been the pillar of our democracy, also throughout this crown year, says the Storting director excitedly.
The world’s first
When the Storting was completed in 1866, the building was one of the first in the world with an integrated mail system. This is because the architect, the Swede Emil Victor Langlet, became fascinated with technological innovations and obtained a state-of-the-art pipe mail system from France.
– It was the last cry of Paris. And imagine they were already thinking of putting it on the walls. It’s absolutely fantastic, Andreassen gestures.
At the entrance to the Storting room, to the right of the door to the press pavilion, a small discreet metal door is bricked up in the wall. If you open it, you look straight into the hole where the first pipe post was sent, from the hallway to the archive.
Around 5,000 documents still fly each year through nearly 1,000 meters of pipeline to one of 40 pipe pole stations located in the various buildings of the Storting. All stations have their own number, and each station can have up to 16 individual arrival numbers. But at the recently renovated Prinsens Gate 26, the pipe post has been removed.
Pipe post
- Scotsman William Murdoch invented the pipeline mail system in the early 19th century.
- A few decades later, the system was developed by Englishman Josiah Latimer, who obtained the patent.
- The first system was established in London, between the stock exchange and the telegraph, in 1855.
- In the following years, the largest European cities built their own public pipeline systems.
- In Prague, the system was used until 2002, when it was destroyed by floods and closed, as the last urban system in Europe.
- The Storting had a pipe post installed when it was built in 1866. The system is still in use.
Will close
Andreassen himself rushed to the Storting director’s office in 2018 after the much-discussed construction scandal and the budget gap of more than NOK 1 billion. This year, the project got the project 290 million kronor in shape.
It now stings the Storting manager’s fingers after attacking the pipe post.
– The next three years we will go through a great digitization program. The goal is to eliminate the need for piped mail. So when the time is right, we must strike, says Andreassen with Nordland’s findings.
Of all things, the coronary pandemic may have helped accelerate the process.
-Maybe we even took a giant gasp, Andreassen says optimistically.
– But the system has its advantages, for example, is it impossible to hack it?
– Yes, yes, that’s true. But then it is possible to snatch a cartridge.
Used for many things
Among Storting employees, email continues to be popular, especially when setting settings must be written. Then the cartridges with “lefser”, unfinished configurations, fly back and forth between offices.
Other things are shipped too, admits department engineer Ståle Lønnkvist, who has overseen the piping station. Among other things, members of a certain group are rumored to have sent small bottles of Bailey at Christmas by post.
– A glass of wine was sent to a station once, but it was empty when it arrived, says Lønnkvist dryly.
Even if the pipe post closes, the system itself will remain on the walls and ceiling.
– It has historical value, says Andreassen.
Opinions divided
Among Storting politicians, it is perhaps not surprising that there are divided opinions on the pipe pole.
One who still fills the cartridges is Geir Pollestad of the Center Party.
– Email is a warm way to communicate, in contrast to the endless series of cold emails, he says. For example, email allows you to perfume documents before sending them, which can make the recipient benevolent.
-We are going to perceive the closing of the pipeline as one more part of the government centralization of Norway, he adds happily.
FRP Leader Siv Jensen, for her part, has forgotten all she has learned about pipeline mail and thinks the system can be eliminated.
– Everything has its time. But there are those parts of the house that are not so happy with the change, so you might not be surprised if there is a proposal that the pipe post be reused, he says.
(© NTB)
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