The Snorkel

In Denver one day last week, a motorist pulled up to the curb in front of the Colorado State Bank. He rolled down his window, and began talking to what looked like a grey steel mailbox at the curb. It was no mailbox, but a "snorkel" (so called after the German submarine air intake) for curbstone banking.

Bank Teller Robert Gibson, an ex-B-29 pilot, was at the lower end of the snorkel, twelve feet down in a cashier's cage beneath the sidewalk. By means of a periscope and a loudspeaker running up through the steel box, he could see and talk with customers at the curb. They could also see him in a periscope mirror in the box and talk back. By dropping their bank books and deposits into an electric dumbwaiter, customers could do their banking in one minute without leaving their cars.

The snorkel was devised by Manhattan's Duplex Electric Co., which has also installed two others (at the American National Bank of Portsmouth, Va. and St. Louis' Mercantile-Commerce Bank & Trust Co.). Colorado State Bank's President B. F. Clark, 89, plunked down $4,000 to get one, spent another $4,000 excavating Teller Gibson's cage. By last week, the snorkel had proved so popular that some 85 customers a day were using it.

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