This may come as a surprise to some of you here at this event, but I'd like to start by talking about the construction of the rail network in Germany; and then I'll bring in the development of a digital network, specifically the internet. In their own way, these two technical revolutions changed the demands placed on money.
The dawn of the railway age in Germany was in the mid-19th century, some time after its European neighbours. The first tracks had been laid in Britain in the 1820s, while Germany's first long-distance line – connecting Leipzig and Dresden – went into operation in 1839. A little earlier, in 1835, the locomotive "Adler" was already serving the six-kilometre line between Nuremberg and Fürth.