The ideal bureaucratic office: Prague 1937

In Futurama, bureaucrat Hermes Conrad is happy when he visits a landmark for him and all bureaucrats: the gigantic Central Bureaucracy complex with millions of filing cabinets. In the real world there is a place that is even more impressive: the Czech Social Security Office in Prague. The pictures in this article were taken in 1937, shortly after the facility opened.

Specifically, the archiving system of the Czech Social Security Administration, located in the Smíchov district of Prague (in the heart of the city centre), contains nine thousand filing cabinets with records of the entire population of the country. OK, that’s not surprising, because what is really striking is that in this place, which can only be visited under strict security and with permits that are difficult to obtain (or at least it was until a few years ago, as it is now more of a cultural attraction than something “secret”), there is a continuous system of files 52 metres long, seven metres wide and eight metres high, equipped with mobile table-platforms. The complex consists of 18 blocks, each containing 500 drawers. Each is several metres long and, if the drawers were stacked side by side, they would be 27 kilometres long. The bureaucrat on duty operates the stacking machine, which moves up, down and sideways using an electrical control system.