KEYBOARD SORTING.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20648, 24 June 1935, Page 1

KEYBOARD SORTING.

Robot Does the Work of Fifteen Men. POST OFFICE MACHINE. LONDON. May 24. The Transorma, the letter-sorting machine which was discussed in camera at the annual meeting of the Union of Post Office Workers, is capable of sorting 15.000 letters per hour. This compares with the present hand sorting rate of approximately 1000 per hour, and it is estimated 'that when the two Brighton “Transormas” are in operation in September it will render 15 members of the staff redundant. They will not be discharged, but the recruitment rate will be reduced. The “Transorma” is an electric machine 75ft long. 12ft wide and 12ft high. It can be worked by five operators sitting on a platform 6ft above floor level. Conveyor-belt. The letters come to the table on a sort of conveyor-belt. The operator sits at a keyboard, and as he reads the place-name on each envelope he depresses the code number of that particular town. Glasgow, for example, may be numbered 68. The operator merely presses the appropriate buttons and the envelope is automatically picked up on a moving belt which carries it unerringly to a slot through which it drops into the proper box There are 250 outward sorting selections, and 120 inward. At present it can deal only with .mall envelopes, but the adjustment necessary to enable it to sort any size 3f letter seems reasonably simple. It will obviously only be worth while to instal • these expensive nachines in big central offices with a leavy postal load, but as time goes nn there is no doubt that sorting will ne concentrated in the central offices, letters will be sorted at headquarters and carried to their districts Dy car. The introduction of the “Transsorma ” raises big labour issues which the Postmaster-General will have to fight out with the postal workers’ union.