Mechanisation & Innovation
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After postal reform in 1840 the volume of mail increased
dramatically. From about 150 million a year, the number of letters rose to over 2 billion a year by
1900. To deal with this, effectively manual jobs needed to be mechanised and
automated as far as possible.
Machines were developed to do the various tasks
in dealing with the mail. The first processes to be mechanised were cancelling the stamps and conveying the mail
within a sorting office. Machines for these were developed during the late 19th and early 20th
centuries.
From 1935, sorting the smaller letters became a mechanised process. Finally coding and
sorting letters, packets and parcels were mechanised. The aim was to complete automation of the
system.
Mechanisation has also reached post office counters. Computerised machines print or vend prepaid labels as stamps and barcodes to track parcels or special delivery mail through the system.
In this section:
- Mechanised postal sorting
- Mechanised cancelling
- Postcodes
- Post Office codebreakers
- Transport
- By Road
- By Rail
- By Air
- By Sea
