Pneumatic Tubes Shoot Hot Meals To Homes (Apr, 1935)

Pneumatic Tubes Shoot Hot Meals To Homes

WHIZZING at mile-a-minute speed through pneumatic tubes far beneath the streets of Berlin, Germany, are thermos bottles each containing part of some housewifes meal. A phone call is enough to bring, in less than fifteen minutes, a complete meal ready to serve, containing exactly the desired quantity and kind of food for each course.

Housewives select their meals from a 300-page menu book distributed to tenants in every apartment house and home within a radius of ten blocks of the gigantic central kitchen. Orders may be placed by phone for delivery at any specified time.

In the kitchen food is prepared in huge galvanized troughs and pots. Long rows of thermos bottles are stacked in readiness to receive dishes ready for delivery. The bottles are wrapped in corrugated containers in preparation for their trip through the vast network of underground tubes.

Newer homes in Berlin will have no kitchens—simply a few pneumatic tube outlets beside the kitchen cabinet or sink. With the elimination of all stoves and ovens in the home, the fame of German women for tasty cooking may soon pass into obscurity.

4 comments
  1. Stannous says: May 29, 200612:25 am

    Unless, of course, you’re Jewish or Slav or Gypsy or gay or Communist or Socialist or black or brown or yellow or handicapped or mentally retarded or a member of the White Rose or a Catholic priest or a Jehovah’s Witness or a trade unionist or a Freemason or a political opponent or just someone they don’t like in 1935 Berlin.

  2. SubIntSoc: The Situation Room says: May 29, 20068:03 pm

    […] From the April 1935 issue of Modern Mechanix: WHIZZING at mile-a-minute speed through pneumatic tubes far beneath the streets of Berlin, Germany, are thermos bottles each containing part of some housewife;s meal. A phone call is enough to bring, in less than fifteen minutes, a complete meal ready to serve, containing exactly the desired quantity and kind of food for each course. […]

  3. Shaydie says: April 16, 200810:09 pm

    I wish they would do this nowadays. I get sick of ordering pizza and Chinese.

  4. M.S.W. says: August 20, 20108:25 am

    I’m surprised they haven’t tried this in hospitals/schools/prisons.

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