We Boomer kids look back in wonder at what the world was like when we were children and compare it to the technologies we commonly use today.
But think about what our parents went through! Typically born early in the 20th century, they grew up with horse-drawn wagons delivering ice to keep their food cold. They would pick up a phone and tell the operator who they wanted to talk to. And they would address a letter with a person's name and a town. That was all of the information that the postal service needed to see to it that it arrived.
This worked with small towns, but deliveries to bigger cities did require a bit more information, e.g. a street.
But by 1943, the situation had gotten complicated enough that the USPS instituted zone codes for larger cities.
Thus, sending a letter to a friend in, say, Los Angeles suddenly got more complicated for our parents. But they eventually learned to add the two-digit code to the address, being rewarded for doing so by speeding up the delivery by a day or two in many cases.
Twenty years later, mailing a letter got VERY much more complicated. That was the year that the now-familiar zip code was introduced. Imagine the pain our parents went through having to add a five-digit number to each letter!
But the brains behind the postal service knew what they were doing. In introducing zip codes, they did so by means of a cartoon character that we Boomer kids saw every time we went to the post office, and also on innumerable commercials: Mr. Zip.
Mr. Zip's familiar personage reminded us that we needed to put a zip code on our letters to make sure they got to where they were intended.
And we dutifully passed the reminders on to our parents.
Zip codes were voluntary when first introduced in 1963. By 1967, they were made mandatory for second and third class bulk mail. But while strongly encouraged for general first class usage, they remain voluntary to this day.
However, leaving a zip code off will typically add days to delivery time.
That, plus the fact that we've been using them since the year that JFK was killed, means that nowadays over 95% of letters mailed include a zip code. If you want, you can go the extra mile and add the optional four digits that were introduced in 1983.
However, Mr. Zip is long gone. But he retired (in 1980) with honor, having helped get a nation to voluntarily use a coding format which has greatly enhanced our mail delivery.
Oh, one last piece of zip code trivia: In 1964, Smokey Bear was getting so much fan mail that he was assigned his own zip code: 20252.
Comments (5)
Speaking of the iceman cometh, I remember there were still homes with ice boxes circa 1952 and although horse drawn ice wagons were no longer employed, an old panel delivery van would make the rounds in my neighborhood and the ice man complete with his tongs would deliver blocks of ice to our neighbors. In the summer we kids would beg him for splinters of ice and were often rewarded with a huge (to small child) melting chunk of pure enjoyment – better than a Popsicle and free!!!
I was suspicious of the new zip codes when they were announced, so to test out their efficacy, I mailed 3 different letters to myself from different mail boxes out of state, addressed with only my name and street address and zip code as the state and city were to be extractable from the 5 digits. None were delivered. I have received “return to sender” mail that had the incorrect zip code off by one digit (e.g. 03512 as 03522) with the correct street, town, and state.
Despite these shortcomings, the USPS does a heck of a job and for $0.42 one can mail a 3 page letter from Maine to California in about 3 days. I say they should round it up to $0.50 and stop the boiling frog type price creep.
Posted by Burt | January 19, 2009 6:15 PM
Posted on January 19, 2009 18:15
Back in 1978, shortly after I moved into this apartment, I received a letter from a college that is less than two miles away. It took 53 weeks to get here (for the previous occupant). The main post office downtown had forgotten a bag of mail in one of their carts over in a corner of their building for a whole year.
Then there was the AAA newsletter that was all mangaled and had a rubber stamp imprint that said it was damaged by the post office. AAA's office was only two blocks away at the time, though the mail would have gone a large circular route to get here.
Posted by David S Paleg | January 20, 2009 7:58 PM
Posted on January 20, 2009 19:58
I remember living at Detroit 5, Michigan. Then I was 48205. The "482" is the Sectional Center Facility code (SCF), and the "05" is my postal zone. The +4 digits are the carrier route. And I agree, the post office is an amazing organization
Posted by David Suwal | February 2, 2009 4:55 PM
Posted on February 2, 2009 16:55
i can still remember putting a single digit between a city and state...
i think mail to omaha was addressed:
omaha 2,nebraska...
i don't know if this was for sections of omaha...or if the 2 meant omaha.
aha!
reading what mr. suwal has written...it must have been a section of omaha.
i didn't realize, until that comment, that the zipcode used the older numbers...cool.
Posted by catnapping | February 17, 2009 6:47 PM
Posted on February 17, 2009 18:47
One piece of trivia not mentioned is that the "ZIP" in zip code stands for "Zone Improvement Plan."
Indeed, we lived in "Brooklyn 13, N.Y." Which became "Brooklyn, NY 11213."
Posted by Ed Greenberg | June 9, 2009 5:28 AM
Posted on June 9, 2009 05:28