A mid­dle-class Parisian liv­ing around the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry would have to bud­get for ser­vices like not just water or gas, but also time. Though elec­tric clocks had been demon­strat­ed, they were still a high-tech rar­i­ty; installing one in the home would have been com­plete­ly out of the ques­tion. If you want­ed to syn­chro­nize time­keep­ing across an entire major city, it made more sense to use a proven, reli­able, and much cheap­er infra­struc­ture: pipes full of com­pressed air. Paris’ pneu­mat­ic postal sys­tem had been in ser­vice since 1866, and in 1877, Vien­na had demon­strat­ed that the same basic tech­nol­o­gy could be used to run clocks.

“The idea was to have a mas­ter clock in the cen­ter of Paris that would send out a pulse each minute to syn­chro­nize every clock around the city,” writes Ewan Cun­ning­ham at Pri­mal Neb­u­la, on a com­pan­ion page to the Pri­mal Space video above.

“The clocks wouldn’t have to be pow­ered, the bursts of air would sim­ply move all the clocks in the sys­tem for­ward at the same time. As for the mas­ter clock itself, it was kept in time by “anoth­er super accu­rate clock that was updat­ed dai­ly using obser­va­tions of stars and plan­ets” at the Paris Obser­va­to­ry. Just five years after its first imple­men­ta­tion in 1880, this sys­tem had made pos­si­ble the instal­la­tion of thou­sands of “Popp clocks” (named for its Aus­tri­an inven­tor Vic­tor Popp) in “hotels, train sta­tions, hous­es, schools and pub­lic streets.”

In 1881, the vis­it­ing engi­neer Jules Albert Berly wrote of these “numer­ous clocks stand­ing on grace­ful light iron pil­lars in the squares, at the cor­ners of streets, and in oth­er con­spic­u­ous posi­tions about the city,” also not­ing those “through­out their hotels were, what is unusu­al with hotel clocks, keep­ing accu­rate time.” Apart from the great flood of 1910, which “stopped time” across Paris, this pneu­mat­ic time-keep­ing sys­tem seems to have remained in steady ser­vice for near­ly half a cen­tu­ry, until its dis­con­tin­u­a­tion in 1927. But even now, near­ly a cen­tu­ry late, some of the sites where Popp clocks once stood are still iden­ti­fi­able — and thus wor­thy sites of pil­grim­age for steam­punk fans every­where.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paris Had a Mov­ing Side­walk in 1900, and a Thomas Edi­son Film Cap­tured It in Action

How Big Ben Works: A Detailed Look Inside London’s Beloved Vic­to­ri­an Clock Tow­er

The Clock That Changed the World: How John Harrison’s Portable Clock Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Sea Nav­i­ga­tion in the 18th Cen­tu­ry

Clocks Around the World: How Oth­er Lan­guages Tell Time

How Clocks Changed Human­i­ty For­ev­er, Mak­ing Us Mas­ters and Slaves of Time

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Cir­ca 1890)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Many of us have put off a vis­it to Venice for fear of the hordes of tourists who roam its streets and boat down its canals day in and day out. To judge by the most vis­i­ble of its eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty, the once-mighty city-state now exists almost sole­ly as an Insta­gram­ming des­ti­na­tion. It was­n’t always this way. “Despite hav­ing no roads, no land, and no fresh water, the Vene­tians man­aged to turn a mud­dy swamp into the most pow­er­ful and wealth­i­est city of its time,” says the nar­ra­tion of the Pri­mal Space video above. Its “unique lay­out of canals and bridges woven through hun­dreds of islands made Venice incred­i­bly acces­si­ble, and it became the epi­cen­ter of all busi­ness.”

Venice, in oth­er words, was at its height what world cap­i­tals like Lon­don or New York would become in lat­er eras. But on a phys­i­cal lev­el, it faced chal­lenges unknown in those cities, chal­lenges that demand­ed a vari­ety of inge­nious medieval engi­neer­ing solu­tions, most of which still func­tion today. First, the builders of Venice had to bring tim­ber from the forests of Croa­t­ia and dri­ve it into the soft soil, cre­at­ing a plat­form stur­dy enough to bear the weight of an entire urban built envi­ron­ment. Con­struc­tion of the build­ings on top proved to be a tri­al-and-error affair, which came around to using bricks with lime mor­tar to ensure flex­i­bil­i­ty on the slow­ly shift­ing ground.

“Instead of expand­ing out­wards like most cities,” Venice’s islands “expand­ed into each oth­er.” Even­tu­al­ly, they had to be con­nect­ed, though “there were no bridges for the first 500 years of Venice’s exis­tence,” not until the Doge offered a prize for the best design that could link the finan­cial cen­ter of Rial­to to the rest of the city. But what real­ly mat­tered was the test of time, one long since passed by the Ponte di Rial­to, which has stood fun­da­men­tal­ly unal­tered since it was rebuilt in stone in 1591. The com­bi­na­tion of bridges and canals, with what we would now call their sep­a­ra­tion of traf­fic, did its part to make Venice “the most pow­er­ful and rich­est city in Europe” by the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry.

Even the rich­est and most pow­er­ful cities need water, and Venice had an abun­dance of only the “extreme­ly salty and undrink­able” kind. To meet the needs of the city’s fast-grow­ing pop­u­la­tion, engi­neers built wells sur­round­ed by sand-and-stone fil­tra­tion sys­tems into Venice’s char­ac­ter­is­tic squares, turn­ing the city into “an enor­mous fun­nel.” The relat­ed prob­lem of waste man­age­ment neces­si­tat­ed the con­struc­tion of “a net­work of under­ground tun­nels” direct­ed into canals, flushed out by the motion of the tides. Venice’s plumb­ing has since been brought up to mod­ern stan­dards, among oth­er ambi­tious engi­neer­ing projects. But on the whole, the city still works as it did in the days of the Doge, and that fact alone makes it a sight worth see­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Venice Explained: Its Archi­tec­ture, Its Streets, Its Canals, and How Best to Expe­ri­ence Them All

How Venice Works: 124 Islands, 183 Canals & 438 Bridges

Watch Venice’s New $7 Bil­lion Flood Defense Sys­tem in Action

A Relax­ing 3‑Hour Tour of Venice’s Canals

Venice’s Canals Have Run Dry Dur­ing a Win­ter Drought, Leav­ing Gon­do­las Stuck in the Mud

Pink Floyd Plays in Venice on a Mas­sive Float­ing Stage in 1989; Forces the May­or & City Coun­cil to Resign

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.