Communication Networks

The pneumatic post—tubes shooting message capsules through underground pipes via compressed air—epitomized Belle Époque ingenuity. By 1900, 400 kilometers of tubes connected post offices. A "pneu" traveled from Montmartre to Montparnasse in minutes. Love letters, business contracts, and blackmail demands whooshed beneath Paris streets.

This system created its own culture. Pneu etiquette developed—the blue paper telegrams for urgent messages, proper formatting for addresses, coded languages for illicit communications. The novelist Colette, conducting multiple affairs, relied on pneus to coordinate rendezvous. "The pneumatic post," she wrote, "enables the modern woman to manage her complicated life."

Newspapers proliferated, enabled by rotary presses and linotype machines. Le Petit Journal reached a million daily circulation. Every political faction, interest group, and neighborhood had its paper. News vendors cried headlines on every corner. Information overload, that modern complaint, had Belle Époque origins. "Too much news," complained one reader, "makes all news meaningless."

The telegraph connected Paris to the world, but at a price that limited use. Businesses relied on coded messages to save money. "Buy wheat" might mean "Grandmother died." Lovers developed private codes. The telegraph office at the Bourse handled thousands of daily financial messages, making or breaking fortunes in abbreviated prose.