Matt Novak’s Paleofuture blog, housed now at Gizmodo, is one of the very best things birthed on the Internet. In a recent post, Novak examines an unrealized “centralized street-vacuum system” that was proposed in 1922 to help New York City curb its pollution problem. The opening:

“New York City at the turn of the 20th century was a pretty pungent place. Piles of garbage, millions of people cooking food, and about 2.5 million pounds of horse manure emptied into the streets per day will do that to a city. And don’t forget the 420,000 gallons of horse urine flowing through the streets each week. But some forward-thinking New Yorkers had an idea to clean up the city: establish a citywide central vacuum system.

The August 1922 issue of Science and Invention magazine proposed this innovative vacuum system for the Big Apple and claimed that it would save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. The magazine claimed that the new system — which could be run privately, or preferably managed by the city — would also eliminate many diseases and drastically cut the mortality rate.

Science and Invention explained that the vacuum pipes needed for such a system wouldn’t be so different from the water and gas pipes that were already running through the streets.”