Long before the delivery of the first email in 1971, while most of the world was happy to wait around for snail mail, the Germans were busy blasting letters to each other at high speeds.
The tubular post, or pneumatic telegraph, was a Victorian invention that conveyed letters rapidly over short distances. It was once popular in shops — it survived in some London stores late into the 20th century — for conveying bills, memos and money from floor to floor quickly and securely.
But Germany took this technology a stage further by linking networks across the country so post could be sent speedily backwards and forwards. At first coaches and then trains made up gaps in the network.
ZDNet UK, courtesy of AMD, recently paid a visit to examine the remnants of Berlin's vacuum post system. Berlin's Röhrenpost or Rohrpost started sending letters on 1 December, 1876. London, Paris and New York also had their own systems.
The basic element of the vacuum post — part of what was then the Royal Post Office, explained our guide — was a tube that contained a powerful vacuum driven by pumps. A metal container placed in one end of the tube was literally sucked to its destination.
Shown here is a typical container after it has arrived at its destination.
Talkback
My brother's first job was as a human back-up for an internal pneumatic mail system, and banks and hospitals still use "Lamson tubes".
There's an article here about the technology
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2004/0524widernettubes.html
and a company here that makes the kit
http://www.ptubes.com/tubeupgr.htm
The comparison with data networking isn't bonkers either. The cylinders would have machine-readable routing information on them, so mechanical devices could redirect them to the right destination.
Now if you want to talk crazy technology, how about vacuum driven Atmospheric Railways?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_railway
I've seen this in use quite recently for sucking away tubes of excess cash (notes) in supermarket tills.
... I'm taking a Hoover and a pipe wrench.