[music playing] HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: Business
letters, love letters, birthday cards, bills, and flyers, all
of them need to be delivered-- now. Since the first missive was
dispatched over 3,000 years ago, dedicated couriers
have risked life and limb to convey the message. Now, the story of the mammoth,
complex, and sometimes dangerous job of mail
delivery on "Modern Marvels." [theme music] In America, the mailman stops
by once a day, six days a week. But moving the US mail
is a mammoth, 24-hour, seven-day-a-week endeavor. When a letter is mailed, it
joins over 600 million pieces of mail to and from
destinations all over the nation and the world that are handled
every day by the US Postal Service. [music playing] That is an excess of 40% of
the entire world's mail volume. Your letter is then transferred
by one of the postal service's 200,000 motor vehicles to
its first stop, one of 40,000 United States post offices. It takes a workforce
of 800,000 people to keep the mail moving,
making the postal service the largest civilian
employer in the US. Your letter, along
with countless others headed for 128 million
addresses in the US alone, is first fed into the culling
machine, which separates out thicker or odd-shaped
envelopes from manual sorting. Then it's on to this machine. Its function is to
cancel the postage stamps and then sort the letters
into groups according to the direction in which
the stamp is facing. Next, this machine. It's equipped with a small
camera that actually reads the ZIP code of the addressee. That ZIP code is then
sprayed onto the envelope in the form of a barcode. Then this machine sorts the
letters into general ZIP code destinations. All the letters for
that general destination are then boxed and sealed. A computer designates each box
for a specific airline flight. The next stop is the airport,
where your letter is put on board one of 15,000 postal
service and private carrier flights, carrying
the US mail each day. Upon arrival at its destination,
your letter and the others are placed into another sorting
machine that reads the barcode, determining to which local post
office each should be sent. At that local post office,
that same type of machine sorts your letter right down
to the delivery route order for the letter carrier who
will complete the delivery. We provide a universal
service at a uniform price. Now, that means that we deliver
to every address in the United States every day six days
a week all year long. We're the only company
that does that. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: But where
did this amazing process begin? What are today's routes
of the postal service? [music playing] The first form of
writing we know of is the 5,000 year old symbols
of the Sumerians of Mesopotamia. This basic written
communication called cuneiform evolved into
a phonetic alphabet by about 2000 BC. With this advancement,
more complex ideas could be conveyed. And the many peoples
of Mesopotamia began to adopt the method
of writing correspondences on clay tablets, which
were sent by runners to their destinations. These runners are the rliest
known postal messengers. Such a method was, of
course, not secure, in cases where secret messages
needed to be delivered. Legend tells of one rather
unusual method credited to Persian royalty in
the mid sixth century BC. JIM BRUNS: A sender of a letter
would take one of his slaves and shave his head, and tattoo
the message into his head, and hold him incommunicado
until his hair grew out, and then whispered in his
ear, it's to go to Joe's. And then the messenger
would go to Joe's. And at that point, they'd shave
his head and read the message. [music playing] HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: The
well-maintained, paved roads of ancient Rome
were built primarily for the movement of military
troops and messages. But ancient government postal
services were not for use by the populace. They were reserved for the
official business of royalty. However, in 100 AD, Kublai
Khan created a system in China that lasted 600 years
and was available to all. A chain of 10,000 post
offices served the kingdom, all in communication with each
other via horsemen and boat. As the Middle Ages came
to an end in Europe, most countries maintained
some kind of postal operation. European monarchs
in the 16th century, such as England's
King Henry VIII, were so concerned with the
mail being transported properly and rapidly that they set
harsh penalties for failure. JIM BRUNS: If you
miscarried the mail, you might forfeit your
life, or you might forfeit a significant percentage
of your salary, so much so that your family
would perish in the process. In fact, if you look at
some European letters, there's a design device that's
actually the stylized image of a gallows to remind the
letter carrier that, if he delayed the mail, he
forfeited his life. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: A century
later, another British king broke with tradition and
opened the Royal Mail service to the masses. King Charles needed
some extra revenues, and he saw a way of getting
those revenues in by freeing up the post to the general public. [music playing] HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: In 1639,
the first official post office appeared in British
North America. It was in the Fairbanks'
tavern in Boston, so chosen because it
was a common meeting place for the people and for
its location on the wharf, where mail arrived from
overseas, though ships took as long as a month to
journey to and from England. Friends, merchants, or
Native American messengers usually carried unofficial
mail within the Colonies. The colonists established a
central postal organization in 1691. Its rights were purchased
by the Crown in 1707, when it was determined
that there was a profit to be made from the operation. John Hamilton was then appointed
first deputy postmaster general of America. Hamilton's most
notable achievement may have come in 1737 with the
naming of Benjamin Franklin, a 31-year-old struggling
printer and publisher, to the position of
postmaster of Philadelphia. Franklin rose to the position
of deputy postmaster general in 1753. Given the lack of
profitability that existed in the colonial postal system,
Benjamin Franklin contributed almost everything to the
formation of a good effective postal system,
first for the Crown, and then later for
the United States. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: Franklin
immediately set out to reorganize the service. He mapped out new and
shorter postal loads, complete with milestone markers. Also, he scheduled night
runs for postal riders between Philadelphia
and New York, cutting travel time in half. [music playing] In the year 1792, there were
75 post offices in the US, each serving about
43,000 customers. By the early 1800s,
postal officials realized that transportation
was the key to mail delivery for a growing nation. So the post office helped
to develop and subsidize every new mode of transport
introduced into the US. Stagecoaches were employed
to carry mail on the better postal roads. And steamboats were
contracted for mail delivery to places where
no roads existed. In 1792, it-- post office really
consisted of little more than a single string of
offices from Maine to Georgia. By 1800, it had become
a network of about 800. By 1831, you had about 10,000. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN:
By 1840, there were more than 13,000 post
offices serving an average of 1,100 patrons each. The post office's growth and
development was a great benefit to the population centers
on the East Coast. However, America was
expanding westward. And with the discovery of
gold in California in 1849, the pioneer movement
began to boom. It took a hearty adventurous
spirit to brave the move West. And it was men of that same
spirit who were entrusted with getting the US mail
through to the settlers of the new frontiers. [music playing] In the early 1800s, letter
carriers earned no salaries, but were paid $0.02 by the
recipient for each letter they delivered. "Mail Delivery" will return in
a moment on "Modern Marvels." As a result of America's
booming westward expansion of the mid 1800s, the US
Post Office Department employed large ships to carry
mail from the East Coast to California. The most favored route
was down the East Coast to the Isthmus of
Panama, across by oxcart, and then north by a clipper
ship to the west coast. The trip across the Isthmus
took approximately six weeks. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN:
The alternative was a three-month journey
around the tip of South America. [music playing] But there was another way. The old West was served by
many private express companies, some small, some large, but
none rivaled Wells Fargo. For all intents and
purposes, American rail and telegraph service stopped
at the Missouri River, and so did the US post office. And that was one signal
failure of the post office in the 19th century. The government did a very
good job of extending service to Michigan and to the
Southwest, the old Southwest, Arkansas, Texas, and so on. But it had great
trouble in California. And it was there
that entrepreneurs, like Wells and Fargo,
really saw their opening. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: Not only
gold miners were making fortunes in California, express companies
were commonly charging 3% to 5% of the value of a gold
shipment to send it back east. The total value of the
gold shipped in 1851 alone was $60 million. Henry Wells and William
Fargo opened their freighting and banking company in
San Francisco in 1852. By 1855, through buyouts,
consolidation and good luck, Wells Fargo was the
only game in town. The post office in the
Western reaches of the US was virtually nonexistent. So Wells Fargo began
supplying Californians with private overland
mail service to the east. The familiar dark green
letter boxes of Wells Fargo were a common sight on the
streets of California towns and were sometimes
brazenly placed directly next to the red US post boxes. With its 1,500 horses
and 150 stagecoaches, Wells Fargo handled
more mail in the West than did the post office. In California, they actually
monopolized the letter-carrying business from the 1840s
right up until the 1880s. If you were living
in California, you felt that Wells Fargo
was doing a much better job than the post office. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: It was
even said that in the West, Wells Fargo was the post office. But even with the best efforts
of Wells Fargo and other express companies, mail
rarely reached California in fewer than 23 days. Speed remained the
enemy of mail delivery. In 1860, the border of the
Western frontier of the US was the Missouri
town of St. Joseph. In March of that year, the giant
trading firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell set out to prove
that a team of couriers on horseback, cutting straight
through the heart of the West, could beat all other express
services' best times, and do so convincingly. [music playing] They set up a string of
100 relay and home stations for the riders along the nearly
2,000-mile route from St. Joseph to Sacramento,
California, with riverboat service
continuing into San Francisco. Relay stations were
every 10 to 15 miles. And they would change horses
at every relay station. Then they would change
riders at every home station. Generally, home stations
were established locations, very likely stagecoach stops,
whereas the relay stations would be far more primitive. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN:
When the rider arrived at a relay station, as
soon as he dismounted, he would hop on a fresh
horse and continue. Riders covered as much
as 100 miles in a day. The schedule allowed
for just 10 days to complete a run between
San Francisco and Missouri. The Pony Express riders beat the
best time of the overland stage by more than half. There is a famous poster
which is quoted as saying, wanted young,
skinny, wiry fellows, not over 18, willing
to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: The
pay was $50 a month. The riders included bronco
Charlie Miller, only 11 years old, and 14-year-old
William Cody, later to be known
internationally as Buffalo Bill. They carried nearly
38,000 pieces of mail, a combined distance equal to
24 times around the Earth. Just one shipment was ever lost. And only one rider was killed. RICHARD NOLF: Billy Tate,
he was killed by Indians. But the horse continued on in. The riders had the finest
horse selection available. They did not use side arms to
try and protect themselves, except if they
absolutely had to. They relied on the horse to
simply outrun the trouble. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: Following
the closing of the final link in the transcontinental
telegraph, the last rider on the last
run handed over the mail in California, and the Pony
Express slipped into legend, just 19 months
after it had begun. [music playing] It was about this time that
the post office's use of trains for mail delivery
changed dramatically. An experiment with a so-called
Railroad Post Office, or RPO, on a route
from Washington, DC, to New York from which mail
was sorted and distributed was a great success. Use of RPOs greatly improved
speed and efficiency of mail delivery by eliminating
the need for stops at train depots along the line
to sort the local mail. The sacks of mail
for a given town were tossed from
the moving train. Specially made arms
held outgoing mailbags, which were snared by the train
as it flew by the station. By 1930, more than
10,000 train routes were being used to move the mail
to every big city and hamlet in the US. RICHARD JOHN: You had a team
of very highly skilled men. They were all men. And they sorted the mail for
the entire United States. That's why big city post
offices were located next to railway stations. It was a moving system. It was inconceivable
with the stagecoaches. And it's inconceivable
with airplanes today. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: The
last RPO made its final run on June 30, 1977. Increasing loss of ridership
over the years to airlines was a major factor
in the decision. [music playing] Through the early
1800s, postal customers had the option of having
the recipient of the letter pay the postage fee. The problem was that the
addressee often refused to pay, thus refusing the letter. In such a case, the post
office's labor and delivery costs were never recovered. In 1840, the British Royal
Mail introduced the idea of prepayment of postage
with an adhesive label, known as the Penny Black. The US followed the British
lead and introduced the $0.05 Benjamin Franklin stamp and the
$0.10 George Washington stamp in 1847. In 1855, prepayment of postage
became mandatory in the United States. Convenience for
the postal customer was increased with the
appearance of letter boxes on street corners in 1858. As the 1800s neared an end,
a new postmaster general with insightful ideas for
the future took office. He realized that
population growth in the US and its
continuing shift westward were creating a
steadily increasing workload for the post office. He also realized
that people alone could not be expected to keep
up with this tremendous growth. Modernization was the key. [music playing] The Pony Express was successful
at delivering the mail but not at making money. Its owners, Russell, Majors
and Waddell, went bankrupt. "Mail Delivery" will return in
a moment on "Modern Models." In 1790, the US mail consisted
of about 1,000 letters per day. By 1890, the nation's
150,000 postal workers were handling 8,000
letters per minute. John Wanamaker became the
postmaster general in 1889. While he praised the
accomplishments of the US Post Office Department in
its first 100 years, he pointed out that the
way the mail was handled had remained virtually
unchanged for a century. Wanamaker's goal, to make the
mail go faster, more safely, and more frequently, was to
dominate the work of the post office during his term. But Wanamaker had even greater
plans for the post office. RICHARD JOHN: He did
help to speed the mail. He was an extraordinarily
ambitious man in his business dealings
and as postmaster general. He helped to promote
Rural Free Delivery. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: Although
it did not become available until after Wanamaker
left office in 1893, Rural Free Delivery was finally
instituted just before the turn of the 20th century. More than 50% of
America's population lived in farming regions. Those people, too, now
received their daily mail free of charge, a service
that had been enjoyed in urban areas for decades. But he was unsuccessful in his
three most ambitious ventures. He wanted the government
to take over the telegraph. He wanted the government
to take over the telephone. And he wanted the government
to institute a parcel post. And in all three
of those ventures, he was blocked by
powerful business groups. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN:
Prior to 1892, all US postage stamps were
basically uniform in design, mostly featuring the likenesses
of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. Wanamaker decided to try
something fresh and new. To celebrate the 400th
anniversary of Christopher Columbus arrival
in the New World, the post office issued a
series of commemorative postage stamps. Congress criticized the idea. But Wanamaker
defended the stamps saying they could become
moneymakers for the post office. He was right. Today, there is a wide interest
in commemorative stamps, sparked in part by the 1993
release of the Elvis Presley stamp. The commemorative
stamps that we do are a benefit to
the postal service. We're at $280 million a year
on commemorative stamps. And we consider that's
going to continue to grow. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN:
Many of these stamps go right into
private collections, much to the delight of the
postal service, which profits from the sale of the stamp
but never incurs the cost of delivering a letter. [music playing] As early as 1877,
the US post office began to use machines
to cancel stamps, replacing the manual method. One of the earliest
innovators of canceling machines in this country was Thomas
Leavitt from Massachusetts. They had their limitations. They could only
cancel postal cards, because of their uniform size. But they were very efficient. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: Leavitt's
hand crank machine could cancel 15,000 postcards in one hour. The most adept postal worker
could only hope to hand cancel 2,000 in an hour. Other companies introduced
belt-driven and then electric canceling machines
in the following decades. By 1920, the post office owned
and operated nearly 3,000 canceling machines. Experiments in automated
sorting of mail began at the main post office
in Washington, DC, in 1907. JIM BRUNS: These
early innovations were not as productive
as they should have been. A lot of things would jam. They weren't as speedy
as you might think. They relied on
someone sitting there with a keyboard kind of
mechanism that didn't always work. First steps don't always work. You trip and you fall. But in the course of
tripping and falling, you learn how to walk. In this case, walking
would come a little later. In the 1950s, we
really began to take our first unfettered steps. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: Another
romantic era in the history of mail delivery was about to
dawn, one that would ultimately capture the attention
and fire the imagination of the entire world. [music playing] The word for stamp
collecting, philately, was coined from a
combination of Greek words meaning the love of being tax
free, alluding to the fact that, before postage stamps,
letters were sent collect. "Mail Delivery" will return in
a moment on "Modern Marvels." The next great frontier for
the post office was the skies. A quite unusual
method for delivery of mail through the air
was proposed in 1801 by a German newspaper editor. The plan was to fire hollow
mortar shells filled with mail from town to town. His idea died on
the drawing board. Englishman captain
Walter Windham is credited with organizing the
first official delivery of mail by airplane. Windham, a motorcar
producer and racer who was enamored with
aviation, sold his business and booked passage to India with
two pilots and eight airplanes in tow. Walter Windham was one of
those visionaries that appeared at the early days of aviation,
a man who could see the future and he threw his
life and his fortune into promoting the
interests of aviation. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN:
A clergyman, who hoped to raise money
to build a new hostel, approached captain
Windham and suggested that by inaugurating an aerial
post funds could be raised. The challenge was
perfectly suited for the ambitious aviator. And the world's
first airmail flight took off on February 18, 1911. [music playing] Just seven months later,
the US post office's first experimental
airmail flight took off from Long
Island, New York. There were more experimental
flights in the following years, but congressional support
was slow in coming. In 1918, Congress appropriated
the needed $100,000 for the first official
airmail routes, using pilots and planes
supplied by the Army. The pilots call
those first planes "flying coffins," because of
the dangers involved with flying them. WILLIAM M. LEARY:
The instrumentation that the early airmail
pilots had were basically an unreliable compass, an
airspeed meter, an altimeter, and a revolution
counter for the engine. It is nothing short
of a miracle that they were able to perform at
the level they did given these crude instruments. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN:
Thousands of spectators converged on Washington, DC's
Potomac Park on May 15, 1918 to witness the historic first
official postal flight to New York City by way
of Philadelphia. President Woodrow Wilson
presented engraved watches as commemorative gifts for the
pilots flying the various legs of the route. Postal workers loaded mailbags
into Pilot Lieutenant George Boyle's plane, and he took
off into the late morning sky to the cheers of the crowd. [airplane engine grumbling] For nine years, the post
office operated the flights. In that period, out of the
roughly 400 pilots that flew the mail, 34 died
in crashes, mostly as a result of bad weather. It should be noted
that at this time the pilots did not
wear parachutes. Pilots voted against
wearing them, in large part because it was
their job to save the mail. And if they jumped out of the
airplane, the mail was lost. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN:
America's new love affair with aviation
turned to obsession with the first transatlantic
flight New York to Paris by former airmail
pilot Charles Lindbergh in May of 1927. But Lindbergh knew that he alone
did not deserve the world's adulation. WILLIAM M. LEARY: Lindbergh once
said that he provided the match to the bonfire and
that people tended to mistake the light of
the match for the light of the bonfire. And I think that's true. The bonfire was the pioneering
work of the airmail service. [music playing] HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: The Post
Office Department closed down its airmail operations in 1927. Private air carriers were
awarded government contracts to carry the US mail,
such was the beginning of commercial aviation. To this day, all regular US
mail is flown under contract by private airlines. The Postal Service does, though,
maintain a fleet of planes to fly shipments of
urgent delivery mail. Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a
date which will live in infamy. [music playing] [explosion] HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: When
America entered World War II, one of the post office's
most important concerns was providing mail service
to the armed forces scattered over the globe. [explosion] The US War and Navy departments
encouraged letter writing between service
personnel overseas and loved ones
back home, stating that frequent and rapid
communications strengthens fortitude, and
livens patriotism, and makes loneliness endurable. To cut down on the tremendous
amount of space taken up on military planes and
ships by sacks of mail to and from service
personnel, V-mail was introduced in June of
1942, V standing for Victory. The post office encouraged that
all letters to and from those in the military overseas be
written on special letter forms that were then
photographed onto microfilm. The film, not the bulky
letters, was then sent overseas to military post offices. 183,000 microfilm letters
could travel in a container the size of a hatbox. JIM BRUNS: At that
point, microfilm would be used to produce a
small photographic replica of the letter. And that would be what the
serviceman or servicewoman would receive out in the field. It saved tremendous
volumes of mail. It was not an American idea. It was actually a British idea. The idea was brilliance,
absolute brilliance. [music playing] HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: More than 1
and 1/4 million V-mail letters were sent from June 1942
until September 1945. To ensure proper delivery
of mail overseas, US military post offices
did not have names. They had numbers. Also, mailing addresses
used by service personnel contained their serial numbers. Inspired by the efficiency of
using a number system, in 1943, the US Post Office Department
developed postal zone coding for use of the country's
124 largest post offices. A one- or two-digit
zone designation corresponded to the
post office station from which letter
carriers emanated. The result was fewer
mail delivery errors. [music playing] An improved system
of coding mail which assigned each address
in the United States a specific five digit code
was introduced in 1963. The ZIP, or Zoning
Improvement Plan, code tells the post office in
which of 10 US regions an address is located, as well
as the major city or large area of population and the local
post office destination. The post office used the
animated character Mr. ZIP in a promotional blitz
for the new system. In 1983, the ZIP code was
amended with the addition of four numbers, which could
pinpoint an addressee down to, for example, a particular
floor in an office building. The speed and accuracy
of mail delivery were greatly improved
by use of the ZIP code. But for a postal system
desperately in need of change, disaster was on the horizon
and eventually rebirth. [music playing] Packages that are mislabeled and
cannot be delivered or returned will eventually be sold
at post office auctions, which are held in
June and October. Years of financial neglect
and management inefficiency combined with outmoded
facilities and low wages for workers caught up with the
post office in the mid 1960s. JIM BRUNS: What happened
was the total collapse of the Postal Service. And most people now
don't know that. But the Chicago post office,
our largest post office, literally failed
to process mail. Literally, millions
of pieces of mail were left stranded, because
the system was overloaded and could not process the mail. And at that point, the Postal
Service itself had to say we're in a race with catastrophe,
unless we change. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: A basic
reorganization of the Post Office Department was proposed
by Postmaster General Winton Blount in 1969. It was approved and signed into
law by President Richard Nixon on July 1, 1971. It took a politically
bloated system where patronage was rampant,
where pay for letter carriers and clerks was deplorable, where
mail volumes were astronomical but the ability to process
mail was ridiculously poor. It transformed all that into a
much more efficient system that was much more humane. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN:
With Nixon's signature, the old Post Office
Department ceased to exist and the new United States
Postal Service officially began operations as a private
government corporation, operated not under the
authority of the US Congress, but of a board of governors
and postal service executives. Also, authorization was given
for collective bargaining with postal employee unions. [music playing] In the old West, eager and
well-equipped private express companies, like
Wells Fargo, provided a serious direct challenge
to the US post office. Today, the modern
US Postal Service is once again being
seriously challenged by a private industry that
looks to have staked its claim to the global business arena. Companies such as Federal
Express, DHL, and the world's largest, United Parcel
Service, continue to dominate in the market
for urgent delivery of mail and packages domestically
and worldwide. Urgent delivery refers to rapid,
often overnight, guaranteed delivery of an item. UPS alone transports more than
3 billion parcels and documents annually in the US and to over
200 other countries, utilizing fleets of 147,000 motor
vehicles and over 500 aircraft. That makes UPS the largest
airline in the world. To compete, the US Postal
Service has in recent years introduced its own urgent
domestic and international delivery services,
such as Priority Mail, domestic two-day
delivery, express mail, guaranteed domestic
overnight delivery, and a guaranteed international
service called global Priority Mail. Competition has helped to
redefine the Postal Service by waking us up to
the need to change. There is nothing like a fit
competitor to get yourself fit. And so competition
is challenging us to be ever better and
ever more productive. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: Even though
the private express companies are doing a tremendous
business, they pale in comparison with
the US Postal Service when it comes to volume. In one day, the
US Postal Service delivers more
letters and packages than does Federal
Express in a year, and in three days what
UPS delivers annually. Tremendous growth in mail
volume marked the prosperity of the 1980s in America. The 1990s proved to be a
challenge of another kind for the Postal Service. Downsizing of companies and the
increasing use of fax machines, email, and electronic
banking have resulted in a measurable decrease in
the use of First-Class Mail service. To guide the Postal Service
into the new frontier and the next century, Marvin
Runyon, a former automobile executive at Ford and at
Nissan as well as former head of the Tennessee
Valley Authority, was appointed postmaster
general in 1992. Runyan knew that technology
was the key to competing successfully. MARVIN RUNYON: It's the most
critical thing we've got. New technology is moving in and
really taking our business away from us. The Postal Service has
more competitors than I ever dreamed of in the
automotive business. And a lot of it is because
of new technologies. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: In 1996,
Runyon spent $900 million on updated postal automation and
committed another $2.6 billion for the coming years. Customer service is where the
Postal Service sees itself leading the pack with a
worldwide website that allows the purchasing of
stamps, a way to look up any ZIP code in the US,
and a postage calculator. The US Postal Service, as
well as postal departments in other countries, is
working to integrate traditional services
with a new technology-- for example, the marriage of
email and standard letter mail. Nowadays, over 75% of
letters and documents actually start on a computer. We're now able to take
that information straight down the telephone line to
our electronic mail centers in the UK, where we can then
print and envelope that mail and insert into
the mailing system. Somebody in the US can send
us their mailing information downline. And as long as we receive
it by 6:00 PM London time, we will get that into the system
for delivery the next morning. So you're looking at about
a 16-hour delivery span. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: 40 centuries
of evolution and mail delivery has brought us to the dawn
of electronic communication, immediate paperless
transfer of information that some are convinced will
replace traditional mail in America. There are, however, certain
things that high tech innovations can never replace. Delivery of mail in the
future will always be there, because these
emails, they're nice, but you can't send chocolate
chip cookies from mom through an email. You can't get a perfumed
letter from someone you really care about through the email. You can't get a letter from your
granddaughter sort of scrawled out through email. It's going to still
require the postal service. We're going to be here. HARLAN SAPERSTEIN: Public
expectations and the demands of business are increasing. If history is a guide
to meet those needs, technology will improve, and
competition will intensify. These will define the role
of mail delivery services and determine their viability
in the 21st century.
TIL: “Buffalo Bill” used to be a mail man!