Britain: An official handbook > 1959

TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATIONS
371
The inauguration of the penny post (the rate remained unchanged until 1918)1
was followed by a rapid extension of the scope of the postal services, beginning in
1841 with the introduction of the registered post to ensure additional safety for
valuable mail. In 1845, Rowland Hill became the permanent head (the Secretary)
of the Post Office, and it was during his term of office that the Post Office Savings
Bank was established in 1861 to meet the needs of the small investor. The money
order system, which had operated as a private venture from 1792 to 1838, was
supplemented in 1881 by the issue of postal orders for fixed amounts. Letterboxes
had been instituted in London in 1855 to facilitate the increased postal traffic, and
in 1883 the parcel post was introduced. By the end of the nineteenth century a
regular delivery of letters was assured to every house in Britain. During the
twentieth century the volume of mail has steadily increased. In the eighteen years
from 1938-39 to 1956-57, the parcel post increased from 185 million items a year
to 249 million, registered postal traffic from 62 million to 115 million and other
postal correspondence from 8,240 million to 9,700 million. Every day the Post Office
handles over 27 million letters and parcels. Each year the Post Office deals with an
ever-increasing volume of Christmas mail; during the Christmas-New Year season,
1957-58, more than 821 million letters and cards were posted.
The Post Office’s services have been developed to match the needs of the traffic.
Improvements include the provision of motor mail vans2 serving many districts,
postal-sorting carriages on the railways, special mail trains on certain routes and the
ingenious apparatus by which bags of mail are delivered and collected by trains
running at express speed. For quick transmission of mails within the central area
of London, the Post Office has for 30 years operated an automatically controlled
underground railway that runs for 6£ miles connecting Paddington in the west with
Whitechapel in the east and serving six intermediate stations; a seventh station is
under construction. The Post Office has set up a Mechanisation and Buildings
Department at Headquarters, particularly to speed the further mechanisation of the
postal services and to ensure that new buildings are designed to accommodate
mechanisation plant. Attention is being given to the use of electronics in handling
the mails.
The Post Office Research Station has developed a partly electronic letter-sorting
machine. Twenty prototype machines are being tested at busy centres, and at
Norwich all the sorting of small envelopes will be mechanised. A parcel-sorting
machine has been developed, and new parcel offices being erected in London, Leeds
and Manchester are designed to accommodate units. Field experiments are being
carried out with machines for separating letters and packets, and for ‘facing’ letters,
i.e. stacking them with all the stamps in the same corner. Experiments are being
undertaken with machines for selling postal orders. The main post offices are being
equipped with machines for issuing parcel post labels printed with the appropriate
value, and the date and name of the office, thus avoiding the use of stamps and
eliminating the operation of cancelling the stamps.
Two large electronic computers are to be provided to process pay data for Post
Office employees in the London area. A smaller computer will expedite the docu¬
mentation relating to engineering stores, and will facilitate the control of stock.
Airmail Services
Railways and motor vans as means of transport for mails are supplemented by
ships and aeroplanes. The figures for the year ended March 1957 show that total
1 The minimum postage rate for inland letters is now 3d. for one ounce.
2 In 1919, the Post Office inaugurated its own motor transport fleet with 48 vehicles;
this fleet now numbers over 37,000, of which about 14,000 are mail vans.