A Series of Tubes

Ted Stevens was right…. The Internet is a Series of Tubes (techno remix).

But the Parisian telegram system in the early 1900s and the American postal system in the mid 20th century had their own tubes, as Molly Wright Steenson demonstrates (in this example of Pecha Kucha, a genre of speech delivered with exactly 20 slides, each one displayed for exactly 15 seconds).