What If You Could Get Books Via Roller Coaster?
Who says libraries can't be fun... for the books? The creators of the Telelift book transport system (aka awesome book roller coaster) at the the National Széchényi Library in Budapest, Hungary clearly believe in the shelf-life satisfaction of books. There'll be no squeaky push carts for these books, and, for customers, no long waits while the librarian trudges up 10 flights of dusty stacks stairs. Nope, these books ride in style from the stacks.
Through an intricately designed system of carts, conveyors, rails, and magnetic switches, the transport system brings books from the stacks to different locations in the library. Yep, it's basically a roller coaster transport system. For books.
With 3.7 miles of tracks and 40 different stops or stations, the system boasts a 10 to 15 minute ride for books to arrive where they're needed. And that's pretty darn good for a library with more than 2.5 million books, and that's not even counting periodicals, audio, etc.
If you're already wondering how you can get one of these things installed in your house, maybe with a built-in whiskey dispenser somewhere. Well, there aren't any prices listed on the Telelift website, but Gizmodo estimates that the whole system cost around $1 million to install in the Széchényi Library in the 1980s. So... yeah.
