Pneumatic post in Berlin

[lethargic_man]

This beautiful building (click through for larger photo) is the old central post office in Berlin. It's a hundred metres away from my shul, so I see it every time I go to shul. The two signs in front of the main door read (though not at the time this photo was taken) "Post Office" and "Tube Post".

* Photo credit: Jörg Zägel (CC licence on Wikimedia).

Oooh, thought I; tell me there was a golden age of steampunk when Berlin was connected by a network of pneumatic tubes delivering post—and Wikipedia, once I remembered to check it weeks if not months later, obliged. The pneumatic post system dated from 1865 and lasted until 1976, and at its height consisted of 400km of tubes.