POST-MARKING LETTERS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1291, 21 November 1911, Page 4

POST-MARKING LETTERS.

AT THE KATE OF' 1200 A MINUTE,

Nearly every month sees an advance in the apparatus used for facilitating the passago of letters through the I'ost Office. Hie approach of (he general elections, with Christmas at il= heels, is making busy times at the Wellington I'ost Office, but thanks to the ingenuity of clever people tho stress nf the work is niinl- - by mechanical apparatus, that performs duties the value of which is hardly computable. The machine which given each letter ills post-mark is quite a simple affair as ono sees it now, yet it is tho product of a decade of' hard thought. Eight years ago (he Wellington I'of.t Office had a post-mark printing machine which was capable of putting through 300 letteis per minute, which, in those days, was thought a remarkably fine performance. The mnchino in liso to-day is capable of stamping no fewer Ihan 1200 letters per minule, and when oil test in .Sydney, not so long ago,'lo,ooo letters wcrt put through in forty minutes. To watch tho machine in operation is interesting. One moment there is a stout block ol letter?, all faced the one wa.v— tho next they aro streaming ribbon-liko through (he. feeders and past. Ilie rapidlyrevolving disc which holds Hie type, and piling up neatly against a movable board on the oilier side. Occasionally an extra tat letter impedes the others, but it only means a momentary slackening of sjiecd, as the spring-feeder gives way to the extra thie.knes?. Before tho letter,-" bo intradural to the machine, they have to be faced (lie one way. The facing ?y done by hand, but instead of conveying the faced letters by hand to the ir.acnino they are slipped into a trough cr carrier, which runs the full length of the table on which the letters are faced. The sides and bottom oT this trough cons'st of travelling leather bands, which convey the letters along to the man who feeds the marking machine. The next improvement to lie effected is to combine the carrier with Iho machine, and so dispense with a man's labour. There have been ninny difficulties in the way of aecom(dishing this work, but it is believed that ll is now within measurable distance ol achievement. 1( is interesting to note that Mr, T>. l'olierlson, Secretary ol the l'ost anil Telegraph Department, has had a good deal to do with the perfecting of the machines n lorrcd (o above. The machines themselves are being manufac.tnreil by Moves. Burn and Son, engineers, of I'elone, who have also made valuable imprevwnvnls in tho machinery from 'time to time.