When movies become reality...
1963... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0123282/usercomments
Vacuum-wielding thieves siphon €500,000 from store safes
Thieves armed with little more than a drill and a powerful vacuum cleaner siphoned £60,000 out of a supermarket safe in France in what police said is the 15th such heist against the same store chain. The burglars have made off with €500,000 by exploiting a flaw in the security system of Monoprix, the chain that has been …
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Thursday 23rd September 2010 18:47 GMT Andus McCoatover
Priceless!
I'm in no way endorsing criminality, but their ingenuity was superb.
However, I'm sure only an insider would know about the money transport system. In England many years ago, in one department store I remember being pushed to in my pushchair, I was fascinated by these transparent vacuum tubes from every till, going up to accounts, the change money popping back in a cylinder a few moments later. Died out 30 years or so ago.
Surprisingly, I saw them 5 years ago on my last trip to USA, in a petrol station in Irving, TX. (West McArthur Blvd, if memory serves).
I guess I know they weren't using a Dyson.
After all, "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux....."
http://258marketing.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/bad-ads-nothing-sucks-like-an-electrolux/
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Thursday 23rd September 2010 20:11 GMT raving angry loony
transport
No need for an insider. The pneumatic tubes are obvious to anyone who cares to look. After the first one, I'm guessing they realized the flaw, and I'm guessing that the accountant whose budget the fix would come from isn't the same accountant who is getting screwed by the thefts, he doesn't care to spend the money to fix the problem.
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Friday 24th September 2010 15:58 GMT Fr Barry
Sadly
Sadly I must be much older than you as I remember one shop in Southend (Soapers) which had the precursor system comprising wires running all over the ceiling back to the central cash desk. I was always fascinated by it when we went in. Money and bill was put into a container and coupled up to the transporter and then sent whizzing off to the cash desk. These "cash railways" are described at http://www.ids.u-net.com/cash/index.htm
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Friday 24th September 2010 13:18 GMT Stoneshop
Still in use
But most of the systems I see today don't use pods. Usually there's a slot into which the checkout clerk can slip bills, and apparently those travel through the tubes just like that. With pods you would have to modify the tubes in a way that the entire pod could be diverted without jamming, but loose bills are much less restrictive that way.
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Friday 24th September 2010 15:58 GMT Harry
Re "I was fascinated by these transparent vacuum tubes"
You would have been even more impressed by some of the stores circa 1957. The Co-Op I think was one of them.
Instead of vacuum tubes, they had a gravity-fed system involving brass tracks running round the store. Sales staff had no tills at all, and buying every item big or small involved the sales person putting money into a pod, pinging that pod up the vertical section of the brass track using something like a rocket launcher, watching it glide slowly down the nearly-horizontal section of the track to the cashier's office, waiting five minutes (it seemed like ages) then watching the receipt be pinged back via the opposite track.
Somewhat inefficient by today's standards, but much more fun to watch.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
