Friday, July 11, 2008

Sorting flats

In my day, newspaper printers often served as Postmasters because Postmasters decided which newspapers could travel free in the mail ... or if they could be mailed at all. That confounded Postmaster who preceded me in Philadelphia -- whose name I refuse to utter -- barred my newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, from the mail entirely! All to benefit his namby-pamby little paper. The nerve!

Well, I stopped that practice tout suite, let me tell you! Thanks to me, all newspapers could be mailed for a small fee. And that fee helped make the British Crown Post in North America -- Can you believe we called it that, back then? -- profitable for the first time.

Of course, we sorted newspapers, catalogs and other flat mail into little cubby holes, like today's carrier cases. (And didn't I invent that system, too? I can't recall …)

But just look how we'll be sorting flats tomorrow. What a difference a couple centuries make!

(CAUTION: THIS POSTAL VIDEO MAY NOT WORK ON POSTAL COMPUTERS!)








What do you think of this new system? Have you ever seen the likes?

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