Paris pneumatic postal system - how cool was that?
I did a bit of research after seeing the scene when Antoine's letter gets delivered by "tube". I wasn't even sure if Truffaut had made the whole thing up as a fantasy, although I had a vague recollection of seeing a similar system before.
Anyway, they do exist, and they're called "pneumatic tubes". I believe Paris is or was one of the few remaining cities to use such a postal system.
See this page for more details: http://www.cix.co.uk/~mhayhurst/jdhayhurst/pneumatic/book1.html
Or see the Wikipedia entry on pneumatic tubes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube
Very cool.
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