How does the mail work?

From that wonderful website www.howstuffworks.com (subscribe to their podcast Stuff You Should Know, it's hilarious) and their fine article about how the US Postal Service works, I have sadly learned that mailing letters is not actually a magical process.

If you want to find out the truth, enjoy the full article here. If you'd rather keep believing it's magic, ignore the article and the rest of this post.

The highlights!
You know the whole thing about mailmen delivering whether rain, sleet, or shine? (Or is that third one snow?) It's an adaption from Herodotus! "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" is inscribed in a New York Post Office. If anyone knows the original Herodotus quote, please comment!


Another surprising fact: despite the internet and other forms of instant communication, "the volume of mail [the USPS] handles each year is actually increasing."


Here's another surprise - although it's a public, governmental body, the US Postal Service is not paid for by our taxes.


"The first official postal service was established in 1639 when the General Court of Massachusetts designated Richard Fairbanks' tavern in Boston as the official mail drop for overseas parcels." This is a place I want to track down and visit!


Benjamin Franklin, wonderful old B.Frank, was our first Postmaster General. (The current - 73rd - PG is one Mr. Patrick Donahoe.)


Apparently, guided missiles have been used to carry mail. I have no idea how that works but it certainly merits further investigation. If you have theories, I'm interested. Another interesting carrier: "According to the USPS Web site, in the 1880s a dog named Dorsey carried mail unaccompanied through the hills separating two California mining towns."


Our parents are older than ZIP codes!!! (For my mother's pride I won't post what year that means...) 


And here's how ZIP codes work: 

• The first digit = the state. 10 digits and 50 states (and DC) means that 2, for example, stands for a whole swatch of the East coast. The numbers increase as you go West.
• The second and third digit = a region within the state. The first three numbers of a ZIP are an "SCF" or Sectional Center Facility code.
• The fourth and fifth digits = smaller units in an area. I  moved last summer, only about 3 miles, and my last two ZIP digits went from 39 to 44. Guess I moved 5 units West!

And, finally, this is how our letters get from point A to point B. The Howstuffworks guys explained it so clearly I'm just copying and pasting their list:

• "You've properly addressed your letter and added the appropriate postage, so you place it into your mailbox. (You could also drop the letter into a public collection box or take it directly to your local post office.)
• A postal carrier collects your letter from the box along with the rest of the mail and takes it to the post office. There, all of the mail is placed on a truck and taken to a mail processing plant.
• At the mail processing plant, machines separate mail by shape and size. They also orient the packages so their addresses are right-side up and facing the same direction. Your letter gets its postmark, and machines print cancellation lines across postage stamps to prevent them from being reused.
• A unique fluorescent bar code is imprinted on the back of each piece of mail. An optical scanner scans the address, and then a bar code representing the specific address is sprayed on the front of the envelope. If the scanner can't read the address, the letter is manually sorted.
• Other processing machines read the bar codes and direct the letters into bins based on ZIP codes -- this indicates the next processing plant, in the region where the letter will ultimately be delivered. (Each post office is served by a mail processing plant.) From the bins, the letters are sorted into trays by ZIP code and flown or trucked to the next processing.
• At the final processing plant, sorting machines read the bar codes and sort the letters by carrier and into delivery order for that carrier.
• The letters are taken to the individual post offices, and the carriers load the trays into their individual vehicles for final delivery."

With all those steps, and so much of it being machine-sorted...maybe it IS magic.

Go send a letter!