AMERICANS' MAIL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25111, 30 December 1942, Page 2

AMERICANS' MAIL

MODERN METHOD USED PHOTOGRAPHING LETTERS (Special) AUCKLAND, Dec. 29. American servicemen in New Zealand have available to them the advantages of an airgraph mail service. This is similar to a method of postal delivery which was inaugurated by Britain in April, 1941. The harnessing of photographic science to the postal services enables letters to be so reduced in weight that air carriage for the volume of letters customarily written by servicemen becomes easy.

The Americans call their airgraph letters V-mail, and all the forms specially provided to their servicemen for this type of letter are prominently marked "V . . .—Mail," to impress on letter writers that the use of this form of mail, by the saving in space it makes possible, is a definite contribution towards victory.

Forms provided for these letters measure llin by Bin. At the top is a panel for the block-printed address to which the letter is to be sent, with room on each side for the sender's own name and postal address and for a censor's stamp.' Space available for the letter itself is about Bin by Sin. The completed form is photographed on to a miniature film and then sent by air to the country of destination. On arrival an enlargement measuring sin by 4in is made and placed in an envelope with the block-printed address showing through a cut-out panel in the envelope. Proving the saving in space resulting from use of this mail method is the fact that, whereas 4500 letters weigh 1681 b, the same number of V-mail letters in film form weigh only lib.

V-mail does not' take the place of, but supplements, the normal letter service. The necessary photographic processes are carried out at the nearest possible point where the equipment is available and a statement on the back of the V-mail forms assures the writer that his letter will be destroyed after the corresponding film has been delivered at its destination.