QUICK MAIL SORTING

Taranaki Daily News, 6 August 1930, Page 11

QUICK MAIL SORTING

“FASTEST IN THE WORLD.” Mr. A. B. Corbett, Superintendent of Mails in Sydney, said in a recent speech that the postal-handling system which would commence operation at the General Post Office in about four weqks’ time would possibly be the fastest in the world. It would cost only £120,000. For this, Mr. Corbett said, the Government would have to thank Australian engineers in the department who would receive no recompense for inventions which would alter the delivery time of letters from the posting-box to primary sorting from about 40 minutes to slightly over a minute. With the exception of parcel sorting, all traffic would be handled in five different floors in the General Post Office, and, with slight human aid, the greater part of the sorting would be automatic.

Four new banks of posting-boxes would soon be ready in Martin Place, these providing for classification of matter and destinations. The mail matter from the boxes would drop on to a conveyor belt —the beginning of a most intricate system of 200 diverting conveyor belts, automatically fed by electrical responses from the opening and shutting of the steel reception boxes. Newspapers, circulars and similar matter would be dealt with by a large box-like machine, with hundreds of sloping and lettered chutes inside, fed by hand and emptied electrically at the other end.