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Education United States Technology

Snail Mail Tech 82

Posted by michael from the pony-express dept.
Paul03244 writes "I found a fascinating Smithsonian Institute page about snail mail technology, part of the SI's National Postal Museum. Great stuff; everything from 'perforating paddles' used during the process of fumigating mail during the Yellow Fever epidemic of the 1880s; to a number of items used in Rural Mail Delivery. A great page to make us realize that even a dialup Internet connection is a great improvement over what our forebears were accustomed to just a generation or two ago."
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Snail Mail Tech More

Snail Mail Tech

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  • Forbears?!? (Score:5, Funny)

    by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) * on Saturday November 22, 2003 @04:10AM (#7535277)
    what our forbears were accustomed to just a generation or two ago.

    Why you young whippersnapper I'll have you know I ain't your forbear and I *was* accustomed to this just a generation or two ago!
    • Same here. I'm 24, and our first address was "RFD 1" (RFD is Rural Free Delivery), no street addresses (ie: 123 Main street). Back then we had rotary phones rented from New York Telephone too -- no touch tone. Kids these days.
      • In some small towns (depending upon the megalomania of the postmaster), you can still send mail to: FirstName LastName City, ST, xxxxx and it will get there.

  • Fed Ex (Score:3, Interesting)

    by alset_tech ( 683716 ) on Saturday November 22, 2003 @04:12AM (#7535281) Homepage
    For real kicks, check out the Discovery Channel's look at FedEX. The have a completely (well, with the exception of loading the packages onto conveyer belts) computer driven system. There are also multiple scanners so that packages do not need to face a select direction... It'll be caught and routed no matter how it's placed. What a world we live in!

    • FedEx owns! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Saturday November 22, 2003 @07:47AM (#7535614) Journal
      Let me get this out of the way first: FedEx fucking rules.

      At least 3 days a week, more frequently 5 days a week in recent times, I'm at the center of it all. FedEx is based in Memphis, and I start many a day at the Memphis World Hub mailroom on the ramp. What most people in Memphis affectionately call "the hub," the ramp is the FedEx installation at the airport. It's fucking big, as you might expect.

      The mailroom is the absolute nerve center of FedEx - well, at least in terms of physical mail; the tech nerve center is quite literally a bunker built into a grassy hill - but we're talking stuff you can carry. Imagine the corporate HQ city of a multinational, multibillion dollar corporation; now imagine the sheer volume of documents being sent back and forth between various offices. Now imagine how crucial this operation is to the survival of the company...

      In terms of FedEx itself, look the fuck out: the mailroom is located in one of many buildings on the ramp comprised of neverending networks of conveyor belts. Sometimes the sound of the belts moving is deafening. FedEx has hundreds of locations just in Memphis. I start my days in the mailroom, and pick up and deliver to 35 of those hundreds of locations here. If you want to hear about something neat, FedEx's interoffice mail system is it.

      Every bag of internal mail going from one FedEx location to another is barcoded. Those barcodes are scanned in by my PalmPilot which is running an app called PWITS (see walzgroup.com). Everything I pick up at the hub mailroom, I scan in. And as it's moved to various FedEx installations surrounding the ramp, it's scanned out. The same with everything I pick up from those locations destined elsewhere.

      Think the "public" side of FedEx is cool? I guarantee you've never seen an interoffice mail system any more advanced than the one I work. Here is another post [slashdot.org] with some more information about just how detailed it gets.

      Long live FedEx :)
    • Some of those packages get "diverted" into strange places too. We have at least 2 laptops a year that get lost along the line somewhere. You can see the diversion with the number tracking though, it gets a departure scan from point C but never a recieved scan at point D. Although, we suffer less loses with FedEx then any of the other commercial carriers.
  • 18th century....

    Am I right?!?!

  • The Snail's In There (Score:5, Funny)

    by Qweezle ( 681365 ) on Saturday November 22, 2003 @04:15AM (#7535286) Journal
    Yes, as a researcher here at [insert important-sounding college with "tech" in the name here], and I must say, it did take us quite a while to figure out how to get the snail in the envelope.

    This new technology, the "hammer" they call it, is getting more snails in the mail, more efficiently.

  • I don't know about you guys (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Heartz ( 562803 ) on Saturday November 22, 2003 @04:16AM (#7535288) Homepage
    but i still find the whole concept of being able to send a letter from one part of the world to another part of the world facinating. The coordination involved. The delivery mechanism. Everything. Sure, you might say that it's nothing new, but to be able to send a physical letter thousands of miles away with 50 cents of postage is waaaaaaay cooler than an email and send. p.s.

    • Re:I don't know about you guys (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      u used 2 b able 2 send babypowder thru the mail.

      Just try it now.

      Dare ya.
    • I heard an interview a while back -- wish I could remember more of the details -- with the guy who runs the international mail coordination office. It's a small group of people, 30 or so, in Switzerland (of course) who deal with postal departments all over the world to negotiate stamp exchange rates (so your local post office can tell you how much it costs to send a letter from New York to Taipei) and international routes. Apparently they've been doing this for a looong time; they're part of the UN now, I

  • Snail Mail Bombs - Not that bad. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Pavan_Gupta ( 624567 ) <`pg8p' `at' `virginia.edu'> on Saturday November 22, 2003 @04:21AM (#7535302)
    It is important to be alert for suspicious parcels, but keep in mind that a mail bomb is an extremely rare occurrence. To illustrate just how rare, Postal Inspectors have investigated an average of 16 mail bombs over the last few years. By contrast, each year, the Postal Service processed over 170 billion pieces of mail. That means during the last few years, the chances that a piece of mail actually contains a bomb average far less than one in 10 billion! - www.usps.gov

    Just a random fact. Mod me offtopic as you will.
  • From paddles for perforating snail mail [si.edu] to paddles in my boss's email:

    Nov 19 05:02:32 gw postfix/qmgr[241]: 0D91C17442: from=VeralsisWorldofOTKSpankingDrawings-bounce@gro ups.msn.com, size=13028, nrcpt=2 (queue active)

  • Something you'll never see again.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by euxneks ( 516538 ) on Saturday November 22, 2003 @04:26AM (#7535312)
    They sent the Hope Diamond via a mail Package!

    Text from here [si.edu]: Hope Diamond Wrapper

    Because it was considered the safest way to transport gems at that time, the package containing the famed "Hope Diamond" was mailed on the morning of November 8, 1958, from New York City to Washington, D.C. The rare gem was given to the Smithsonian Institution by Harry Winston. Sent by registered (first-class) mail, the fee totaled $145.29, as indicated by tapes from a meter machine. For the package weighing 61 ounces, the postage amounted to $2.44 and the balance was paid for an indemnity of about $1 million.

    The package was delivered on Monday, November 11, by letter carrier James G. Todd, who had picked up the package at the Old City Post Office (now the home of the National Postal Museum) for delivery that morning. Winston noted that he routinely used the mails to deliver valuable cargo. As he told a reporter from the Washington Star on November 8, ?It?s the safest way to mail gems. I?ve sent gems all over the world that way.?

    The world-famous deep blue diamond continues to be a visitor favorite. The stone?s history is shrouded in mystery, superstition and rumor. The stone was originally thought to be a rough cut diamond weighing 112 carats. Some historians believe that it was once owned by Marie Antoinette, who, along with her husband, King Louis XVI, was beheaded in January 1793 during the French Revolution. The diamond, then known as the ?French Blue,? disappeared from public view for over 30 years. A Dutch diamond cutter is rumored to have carved the stone down to its present 45-carat weight.

    The diamond was purchased in London in 1830 by Henry Hope. During the 19th century, the stone passed through several hands, and although none of the stories can be confirmed, it was said to have caused grief and tragedy to all of its owners after it left Hope?s possession. When the gem arrived in America in the first decade of the 20th century, it was purchased by jeweler Pierre Cartier who sold it in 1911 to Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean (whose daughter later died from an overdose of sleeping pills, and whose son was killed in a car accident). After Mrs. McLean?s death, the stone was purchased by Harry Winston in 1949. The ?curse? of the diamond may not have stopped there. According to a report in the Washington Post on August 21, 1959, James Todd, the mailman who delivered the stone to the Smithsonian in 1958, was beset by a deluge of bad luck. Within that year, one of Todd?s legs was crushed by a truck, he received head injuries in a separate car accident, his wife died of a heart attack, his dog died after strangling on its leash and four rooms of his house were burned in a fire. When he was asked if he attributed his run of bad luck to the diamond?s curse, Todd stoically replied, ?I don?t believe any of that stuff.?

    Can you believe it yourself? The famed Hope Diamond, sent by mail package!

  • Shouldn't be so smug (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Saturday November 22, 2003 @04:28AM (#7535315) Journal
    I mean, junk mail was a problem, but it never reached the epidemic that is the spam problem today...

    On average I receive about 300 emails per day, about 150 of which are spam. If we were still using "snail" mail, I could probably start a recycling business with that lot ...

    Simon.

  • its total throughput that counts I tell my boss (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Never underestimate a donkey train load of cuniform tablets.

    And talk about archive-ability! Proven multi-thousand year durability in readable condition!

  • Snail mail is much more impressive than EMail... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Saturday November 22, 2003 @06:32AM (#7535512)
    At least if you look at the technology involved.
    Getting information around isnt much of a problem, but getting a PHYSICAL object from any point in the contry to any other point over night while costing less than 1 (here in germany) is really impressive.
    And even before finereader and omipage were really usable, the addresses on snail mail were identified via OCR and automatically sorted. Even the handwritten... (ok, if the ocr failed, a terminal monitor showed a worker the image of the letter and the most likely choices to decide...)
    • Both rely on a two fundamental technologies: identification and transportation. Without both, there is no mail. Everything else is just window dressing to process large amounts of mail more efficiently and reliable. The later really spurred some large scale technological innovations.

      For the postal system in the western world the turning point came when the roman empire built reliable roads which allowed mail to be delivered in a matter of weeks. (Their system of forts and aggressiveness kept the mail

      • I have recieved letters that had no zip-code at all, the city name where i lived back with my parents and the street name and number of my current address...
        The system is REALLY impressive, in a way.

        (my grandfather makes willow baskets, and he once recieved a postcard addressed only with "to the basketmaker in townname". No idea how they found him...)

  • Snail Mail Tech (Score:4, Funny)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Saturday November 22, 2003 @07:55AM (#7535632) Homepage
    From the Desk of the Postmaster General:

    In an effort to respond to competitive market forces, from now on all carriers will be required to shout in a loud voice, "You Have Mail!" upon successful delivery.

    Thank you.
    • Careful, your education is showing. The actual AOL bit is "You've got mail!" The piss-poor grammar was one of the first things that turned me off about AOL.

  • A great page to make us realize that even a dialup Internet connection is a great improvement over what our forebears were accustomed to just a generation or two ago."

    Well, when you're out in the rural-like and out of TP, let's see how much good that "page" does you. Sears & Roebuck Co. made many people happy back then with their catalog. :^)

    In some ways, postal catalog sales were a forerunner of electronic commerce. Imagine, business that just needed communications and shipping!

  • Disk Swap by snailmail. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Saturday November 22, 2003 @08:09AM (#7535653) Homepage Journal
    A bit of "technology" used by Amiga Demosceners. ..when the modems were scarce and phone bills high. Every more or less respectable demoscene group had a member whose function was listed as "swapper".

    Swappers would get in contact with swappers from other groups, and exchange floppies full of newest stuff, productions, news, and everything of any interest (plus some exotic stuff other than floppies - a chicken bone, The Party membership ID, misprinted train tickets, and whatever interesting that caught the eye and filled the envelope up to (but not above) another price-weight treshold.)

    One of the most specific swapper activities was "faking stamps". With 80 and more contacts, at least one letter a month exchanged with each of them, you had to cut on stamp prices, so you smeared the stamp with water-washable glue and wrote in the letter "stamps back", so your contact ripped your stamps off the envelope and sent you in his reply letter together with floppies. Then some washing and stamps could be reused - one set of stamps could go the same way 5-6 times before they needed to be replaced because they started looking suspect. And if it was found - you never put return address on the envelope and nobody in the post office could ever read an Amiga floppy :)

    Another practice was making the floppies sent pretty. You almost never sent back the same floppies - they were in constant flow. Adding a marker signature was the default. Often some sticker or a drawing was common. But there were true masterpieces: A floppy painted gold, with the metal part (and under it) painted silver, the metal part without the spring but removable and attached with a thin chain to the write-protect hole, so you removed it before inserting and it was hanging from your floppy drive while the floppy was inside.

    And finally all the "disk hunt" methods. Famous swappers were rarely replying to newbies who were asking for contact - you had to gain some fame on the scene with your group's productions - or get a recommendation from another swapper. So - the unanswered letters were a good supply of floppies. Sometimes they would even put an ad in some zine (spread by swapp of course ;) which said a girl wants to swap, everyone welcome etc. This was bringing a good deal of free floppies, often with some quite funny stuff on them.

    Well, Internet was what put end to it. Plus average data size - sending 6-8 floppies in one letter wasn't cheap or easy anymore, and with A1200 getting more common, high-level languages, multi-disk demos and mpeg movies, it became necessity...

    [this post is environmentally friendly - created with 95% recycled material]

    • Ah.. the good old amigascne days. It's crazy to think that I used to have thousands of disks lying around.

      Do you remeber that great feeling when the first letters started to trickle in after TP, TG or Asm?

    • I often wondered why people were faking stamps..

      A scheme I worked out, but never used, would be along the lines of;
      Say Alice in New York wants to exchange mail regularly with Bob in Kansas.

      First off, Alice sends a letter to Bob's address, but marked "Mike". Bob opens it, non-destructively, then sends it back with new contents marked "return to sender, address unknown".

      Then Bob sends Alice a stamped but "mis-addressed" envelope to Alice. Alice uses this to send stuff back to Bob "return to sender", but in
      • Bob opens it, non-destructively, then sends it back with new contents marked "return to sender, address unknown".
        Alice receives info that the letter was returned. She goes to the post office and to get her letter back, she must pay cost of sending it from Bob to Alice.

        Besides, she would have to send it as registered letter. Only registered letters can be returned to sender in that manner. Normal misadressed leters get discarded.

        At least that's how it works here.


        • Bob opens it, non-destructively, then sends it back with new contents marked "return to sender, address unknown".
          Alice receives info that the letter was returned. She goes to the post office and to get her letter back, she must pay cost of sending it from Bob to Alice.

          Besides, she would have to send it as registered letter. Only registered letters can be returned to sender in that manner. Normal misadressed leters get discarded.

          At least that's how it works here.

          I guess we have it schweet, then.. ;-)
        • The context was in that of the US Postal System (Hint: The article is about US Postal history).

          In the USPS, if a letter is mis-addressed but has a correct return address it will be returned to the sender at no cost, delivered right to their mailbox.

  • Of course, the handwriting analysis that is being worked on now at CEDAR research [buffalo.edu] is really cool.

    If you ever get a tour there, it's like walking through a programmer's playground.

  • Modern mail needed fast transportation. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MtViewGuy ( 197597 ) on Saturday November 22, 2003 @09:49AM (#7535867)
    An interesting tidbit about mail: in the old days, it took so long to send a piece of mail that it was often just as fast going there yourself to communicate a message. It wasn't until the advent of railroads by the middle of the 19th Century that made it possible for reasonably fast mail deliveries. That's why until the 1960's one of the biggest customers of US railroads was the US Post Office.

    Today, US Mail sent under 300 miles is usually done by truck, with distances beyond that sent by airplane (the cargo holds of many airliners flying in the USA often carry large sacks of First Class letters and small packages). Interestingly enough, the private United Parcel Service uses railroads extensively for their UPS Ground package shipping service for longer-distance shipments.

    • (the cargo holds of many airliners flying in the USA often carry large sacks of First Class letters and small packages)

      Not anymore. A couple of years ago, FedEx got the contract to move all US Mail. Go to the Post Office, you're going FedEx. Most of the airlines were more than a little upset about this, as the gov't had been paying them to carry mail, and since there was no additional cost associated with doing so (since they were going anyway), it amounted to free money for them.

      Interestingly enough,

      • My bad. =) I forgot that FedEx has the current US Postal Service First Class airmail contract.

        That does explain why I haven't heard FedEx retiring any of their large fleet of planes (except for planes that were scrapped due to accidents). FedEx's Oakland, CA air cargo center is probably the busiest air cargo center on the US West Coast.

    • Re:Modern mail needed fast transportation. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Saturday November 22, 2003 @12:11PM (#7536367) Homepage
      An interesting tidbit about mail: in the old days, it took so long to send a piece of mail that it was often just as fast going there yourself

      Unless it's sent by a super-parabolic trans-atmospheric US Mail Cannon, physical mail has and will always take at least as long to get there as it would for you to go yourself. Mail can only travel as fast as the conveyances they put it on, and most of those conveyances are used to move people as well.

  • The international postal system is a rich ground for researching networks. What a pity graph theory is not my strong point.

  • Sounds like DeHavilland's experience with building the plane that executed the first airmail service [si.edu] was a lot like a lot of software projects...

    Version 1.0 had a lot of bugs:
    - engine would crush and trap pilot in minor crashes
    - exhaust pipes vented in pilots eyes
    - compass only worked in some quadrants
    - altimiter didn't work great for 0 - 1000 feet

    But version 2.0 worked and the airmail planes went on to carry 775 million letters.

  • You insensitive Clod!
  • Most people use the mail system to send their bill payments for everything from internet service to septic bills, and of course credit card payments. The processing centers that receive these payments often process millions of payments every month. Processing all this mail has become as high tech as the post office high speed sorters, a far cry from the armies of billing clerks that processed the credit cards and utility bills a generation ago. This link [opex.com] to the company I work for provides a good window int
  • And it wasn't no dam' generation ago that it was snail mail and telephone, dammit, unless I'm from a generation ago...which makes me a VERY active ghost.

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