July 27, 2023 The ZIP Code was launched 60 years ago this month as part of a program of improvements to increase postal delivery speed. At the time, Americans were already struggling to adapt to three-digit area codes for long-distance telephone calls, so promoting the five-digit ZIP (short for Zone Improvement Plan) Code was a…
July 13, 2021 When Musette Henley started working at the Chicago Post Office as a mail sorter in 1961, she and her co-workers had no say over their work schedules. â[We] had to check the board every day to see if you worked the next day. We would not know ⊠what day we would…
WASHINGTON â The U.S. Postal Service marks its 50th anniversary as an independent agency today. On July 1, 1971, the U.S. Post Office Department became the U.S. Postal Service, a transformation made possible by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970. This law transformed the Post Office Department from a cabinet level agency to an independent…
Robert J. Lombardoâs first day back at work as a clerk for the Post Office Department in Framingham, MA, coincided with a national strike that would lead to a significant change for the organization. âWhen I came back from the service, my first day back I think was March 15, [1970], and Iâm here on…
Postal worker Ursula Hennessy doesnât just remember the August day 50 years ago when President Richard Nixon signed the landmark Postal Reorganization Act. She was â to borrow a line from âHamiltonâ â in the room where it happened. Hennessy was in her 20s when she joined the Post Office Department in 1969 as the…
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the most comprehensive postal legislation since the founding of the republic â the law that transformed the Post Office Department into the Postal Service. President Richard Nixon signed the Postal Reorganization Act on Aug. 12, 1970, but as Publication 100, the Postal Serviceâs official history book explains, the…
By Ashley Bowen-Murphy – October 28, 2015 The “dead” mail arrived constantly, black bags filled with almost 30,000 letters and parcels each day. These high casualties caused only a general sense of alarm among late 19th and early 20th century Americans. Postal clerks in Washington, D.C. sorted through all letters pronounced dead, separating the truly…
