The Parcel Sorting Machine
1959 · Keyed Conveyor Parcel Sorter · Work 745 of 1,871
A parcel sorting machine of 1959 filling the parcel hall of the main post office in Washington, a grey steel framework four and a half metres high carrying three grey conveyor belts one above the other, from the belts at even spacing sheet-metal chutes slanting down into canvas carts, each chute with a blank label frame, on the belts plain brown paper parcels tied with string, smooth side up, two thirds of the chutes bare and shining, on a steel platform a man seen from behind at a desk of small round key tops seen at a slant as pale dots, concrete floor, even light from fluorescent tubes overhead.
- What it was used for
- The US Post Office Department sorted parcels semi-automatically: an operator read the address and keyed the destination, and the installation moved the parcel along conveyor belts to the right chute. The first such machine, by the postal service's own account, went into service in Baltimore in 1956 — that is the date of introduction for testing, not of volume procurement. The large installation stood in the main Washington, D.C. post office, refurbished at the end of 1958 and the beginning of 1959, which the National Postal Museum says received over 6 miles of conveyor belts. Its parcel sorter used about 1 mile of belt, had a maximum height of over 15 feet, weighed 125 tons and sorted about 15,000 parcels per hour — half the previous processing time, per the same source.
- What was new
- The principle was a division of labour: reading and keying stayed with the person, carrying and dropping went to the machine. The barb is in utilisation. A cost analysis of 27 December 1960, quoted by the National Postal Museum, found that the Webb parcel sorting machine was used to only 41.8 percent of its potential capacity in the period studied. Procurement continued anyway: 21 machines installed or under contract in 1961, and 72 by 1965. A separate machine for unusually sized items, designed in August 1958, was concluded to be uneconomical in May 1960.