Luft unter Druck – Dreizehn Geschichten zur Zukunft der Pneumatik

The history of pneumatics is rich in visions of the future. Over the course of around two centuries, the seemingly simple process of pressurising air gave rise to increasingly daring technical promises, hardly any of which were ever fulfilled. From the "wind machine" as a solution to the energy problem around 1800, to the pneumatic underground railways in London and New York in the late 1860s, to a railway planned in Vienna, in whose tube systems an artificial wind was to transport coffins to the newly built Central Cemetery, to robots that in the near future will both think pneumatically and move around on Venus with the aid of compressed air – Florian Bettel shows how these designs testify to efforts to make technical use of the abundant material that is air, even today.

Florian Bettel, Department of Cultural Studies