GIANT MAIL SORTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 21, 25 January 1936, Page 15

GIANT MAIL SORTER.

ENGLAND'S LATEST ROBOT. MARVEL OF EFFICIENCY. I LONDON", December 20. England has just put into operation its. first giant mail sorting machine at Brighton. This robot is designed to obviate the repeated manipulation or "double handling" of letters which is unavoidable under the present system of sorting by hand into pigeon-holed boxes. A sorter at the new machine can, bv means of ingenious devices, consign a letter to any of the 325 boxes in the machine, and thus dispose of the letter finally so far as Brighton is concerned. A sorter at the existing tables can divide his letters in only a preliminary way to 48 boxes. The large proportion of items necessarily sorted to miscellaneous groups at this first handling must be transferred to other nests of 48 pigeon-holes for more individual selection before they can be dispatched to their destinations. When the new macliin* is operating •at a period of heavy pressure 10 sorters are at work together. Each man is seated, with a keyboard in front of him, .similar to that of a typewriter. Hie supplies are sent to him on a conveyor belt from tables on the ground floor where stamping machines have postmarked and obliterated the postage stamps at high speed. The keys cover a range of 325 numbers, and every town or area of importance has its own number allotted to it —thus Liverpool may be 200, Eastbourne 23 or Norfolk 300. As the letters are mechanically propelled toward the operator by a slowly moving belt, he lifts each separately and drops it through an aperture with his right hand, at the same time tapping the code number on his keyboard with his left hand. The letter falls into a rapidly moving box shaped metal carrier, and is quickly carried to the storage receptacle indicated by the operator's directional number. As each of the sorters can deal with at least 40 letters a minute and the machine has a capacity output of 24,000 finally sorted letters an hour, the masses of letters posted at Brighton during the early evening can be quickly disposed of. During the peak period of pressure all the 050 boxes rapidly .fill ,up-with sorted correspondence, and when clearance is essential small red lights signal their warning to the officers deputed to tie the letters into bundles prior to their dispatch in mail bags to all parts of the country. ••