FAREWELL PONY

e [Music] farewell Pony farewell and forever thou staunch Wilderness overcoming Swift footed messenger thou W the pioneer of the continent and the rapid transmission of intelligence between its peoples and have dragged in your train the lightning [Music] itself yes Pony you have dragged in your train the lightning itself modern methods to move a mountain of male far faster than any man in your era could have ever dreamed possible even with the boldest of Dreams this has benefited more people in our nation than ever before and it has been done against Great odds what is your awareness of the problems and dynamic developments that have followed the flying hoofs of the Pony Express to wash your in a new era of Postal Service year after year you have used mail to communicate with your fellow man at a rapidly increasing rate today your country's male volume is staggering every man woman and child including newborn infants 182 million people plus receive an average of one piece of mail every day this is statistical fact it means that your Postal Service must collect transport sort and deliver more than 63 billion pieces of mail plus 1 billion Parcels a year this represents more than 2/3 of the entire mail volume of the whole world but this should surprise no one for male volume reflects a nation's economy culture education and way of life as we continue to dominate the world in these areas and continue to Surge forward in these areas our postal service will be faced with an even more overwhelming mountain of male and the grave costly and complicated problem of handling [Music] it these were sounds and sights of sign significance to many World War II and Korea demanded much of our nation's Body Spirit and economy Free People United and a concerted effort overcame the aggressors but the necessary concentration on war efforts inflicted deep wounds in families firms and federal agencies perhaps the most seriously affected of these federal agencies was the post office Department male users and operating costs continued to grow and grow while post office facilities mail handling capacities and postal rates failed to keep Pace the serious issue the issue of War demanded everyone's attention the result was inevitable bottlenecks that strangled male handling and operating cost that boosted our national debt by $2 million a day unloosing the strangle hold on our males at the end of the wars would have been a Herculean task in itself if times could have stood still but babies blessed them not only continued to be born but they were born at a booming rate as our economy was expanding the population was exploding and it has come as no surprise to forecasters that today our male volume is 28% greater than it was in 1953 census experts say that by 1985 there will be 304 million people in the United States compared to the 182 million of today and each of these people will send and receive not 350 pieces of mail each year as we do now but 485 pieces of mail instead at the end of the Korean War something had to be done service improvements with long range value had to be made career postal Executives met with prominent men from business and industry appointed to important positions on the postal staff the situation demanded a program to improve service reduce costs and decrease the annual deficit of $700 million how could all this be accomplished well the men who met mustered all the perception and vision within their capacity and concluded make the Postal Service as modern as the economy run the post office Department as it should be the biggest and most efficient business in the world with a payroll of 560,000 employees an annual sales volume of $20 billion managing 35,000 post offices operating the world's largest Fleet of Motor Vehicles and the world's largest users of Transportation facilities Guided by comprehensive reports from leading business management Consultants SW changes were initiated an informed Congress allocated funds to execute an urgently needed program of modernization the biggest ever undertaken in industry or in government a bureau of personnel was established revolutionary Concepts were introduced into existing bureaus the spirit of progress motivated employees to contribute knoow and effort business and industry became willing suppliers of engineering and production facilities mechanization automation these these were envisioned as solutions to mail handling bottlenecks inside our major post offices a new office research and Engineering was created to concentrate on the development of mechanized maale processing Concepts research projects were launched with many Private Business concerns field studies into delays in mail delivery revealed improper use of mail service by a poorly informed public thus was begun the job of educating the male user to speed delivery of his mail he has been provided with postal Zone number directories for6 cities many new and simplified information pamphlets have been written and printed to help him help him to better mail service the information in these pamplets has also been given wide distribution through the cooperation of press radio and television new mailing procedures to speed mail handling were introduced and put rapidly into large scale use through these information pamplets a good example combination mail combining first class letters with parcel post eliminates duplication of handling and cuts Post Office operating costs studies reveal that planned relocation of mail deposit boxes in strategic pedestrian areas would provide not only a service improvement because of convenience to customer thought that it would expedite maale pickup reduce mail truck mileage and allow for the handling of increased mail volumes at reduced time and [Music] costs other studies were made too inside post offices peak hours of customer service were pinpointed with this information it was possible to consolidate operations thus improving Manpower and male handling efficiencies [Music] less Manpower could handle more work and Personnel could be reassigned to other duties like processing certified mail a new Postal Service introduced to the public to provide the important benefits of registered mail including proof of delivery at lower costs the development of stamp fending machines for post office use has also improved customer service and it has boosted post office efficiency by making it possible to apply vital manpower to handling maale the big bottleneck inside the post office Department's office of research and Engineering laboratory are an array of vending machines that can be installed in combinations to provide automatic customer service in always open unattended Branch Post Offices the substations of tomorrow in our rapidly growing Suburban areas machines like this one we's letters and ven's regular stamps air mail stamps books of stamps stamped envelopes postcards and writing [Music] paper there are phone dial versions and push button versions automatic parcel weighing stamping and handling is provided by this prototype parcel post acceptance machine foolproof units like this one automatically change $5 and $1 bills service has always been the immediate concern of the post office and the Department's Bureau of facilities is meeting today's service demands with a continuing program of new post office building construction Leasing and modernization in less than a decade more than 5,000 600 buildings have been privately constructed and leased for post offices thousands more are needed through this leasing program far more buildings were obtained to meet the mail handling crisis than could have been obtained if the department itself had built them over the next four years and the modernization program now underway some 3,000 currently leased buildings will be furnished with modern equipment and almost 1,500 existing Federal buildings will be renovated and equipped with modern fixtures [Music] a look at the world's most modern post office located in Providence Rhode Island will show you what such a comprehensive building and modernization program can ultimately mean an impressive sight from the air the Providence Post Office is 420 ft long 300 ft wide and 55 ft High big enough to accommodate two football fields today this most modern of all post offices handles 1,100,000 pieces of mail each day but it has been designed to meet headon the still heavier male volumes of the future by 1977 it will process nearly 2 million pieces daily male here flows to and from more than 100 post offices in the Providence area a Letter's journey through this post office to its destination is a marvelous and Rapid one from helicopters from inside deposit slots and outside pickup points male in Sachs moves into the work area on overhead conveyors Sachs are open and the male spews out it tumbles and slides down the sides of a hopper to machine 17 ft long and 7 ft wide that will separated according to size by means of a series of vibrating trays throughout the Separation by vibration process the maale moves automatically and continuously onto a station to where it is stacked and fed at high speed through nine of these machines that separate and cancel each letter according to the location or position of the stamp on the envelope electronic eyes and other amazing features on these machines provide almost errorless mail handling at the rate of 25,000 pieces an hour per machine after cancelling the mail moves to 11 remarkable letter sorting machines like this one where vacuum arms pick up letters one by one and place them in front of an operator by punching three keys he automatically activates a memory unit in the Sorting machine which remembers where each letter is going and eventually automatically drops it into one of 300 destination bins the mail is removed from the bins by postal employee who identifies each stack with a destination ticket and ties it mechanically into bundles to be placed onto conveyors that move it for the fast transport to its destination by train plane truck and other means at the Modern mechanized post office in Providence Parcels are automatically handled too from a drive-in service window and inside and outside parcel drops packages are mechanically moved by conveyor to two giant sorting machines at these sorting machines keyboard operators code each parcel according to destination and slide them onto moving [Music] trays the Sorting machine's memory devices tilt the trays when they come to each parcel's proper destination bin one after another as if by Magic the endlessly moving parcel bearing trays travel out over the long line of bins tilt and deposit their cargo the bins that receive Parcels from the moving trays slide them on to conveyor belts which move them to their correct collecting and assembling points where they are sacked the sacked Parcels are then loaded into a continuously moving line of tow carts and move on for fast dispatched to their destinations this post office at Providence is truly a Marvel the ultimate in modern male handling mechanization but postal progress Must Go On on all fronts already conveyorized mail flow systems and improved versions of the electronic equipment and male handling techniques proving so efficient in the Providence Post Office are in use in major cities to give maximum efficiency to older facilities this high-speed electromechanical solder is a typical example handling an excess of 43,000 pieces of mail an hour sorting them to 300 destinations postal employees working on the bin side of the high-speed sorder empty each bin identify their contents with destination tickets and place them onto a unique automatic machine integrated with a new sorter this machine conveys the identified stacks of sorted mail to a fully automatic bundle tying station inside the post office Department laboratory in Washington DC new kinds of mail handling machines are being tested this unique machine codes letters with a magnetic ink identification [Music] after coding this magnetic ink reading machine sorts the letters completely [Music] automatically here's another remarkable coding machine this one codes letters with phosphorescent inks that can't be seen with a naked [Music] eye but when the letters get to this phosphorescent ink reading machine complex electronic devices detect the code and quickly sort each letter without error to its proper destination bin you get some idea of how fast mail is handled by this sorder from the speed at which the names of destination cities appear as they pass the machine scanner high-speed handling of male inside post offices help solve the mail delivery bottleneck but of equal importance is the handling of mail on the outside of the post office this area too has been improved with Visionary developments the post office Department's Bureau of Transportation working with truck and railroad experts initiated transportation of mail by rail van rail van is unique it has two sets of Wheels one set for highway travel so it can be moved from offline post offices to Railroad terminals the second set of wheels permits it to be hauled on railroad tracks another railroad mail handling development is flexivan flexivan units are essentially semi-trailer trucks but they are unusual the trailer body can be swung off its wheels under the flatbed of specially designed railroad cars both rail van and flexivan have introduced a new versatility in mail transports that reduce both costs and delay of mail handling since both the time and cost of transferring mail from truck to train has been eliminated completely another modern innovation in mail transportation is the airlift through Airlift the post office Department makes use of available Airline transport space for the speeded shipment of first class mail currently 1 billion 600 million pieces of regular first class mail are airlifted annually to all parts of the country saving as much as 2 Days in the delivery of transcontinental [Music] material a regular part of the mail program is helicopter service few people realize that the regular handling of air mail by helicopter from airport to post office and the transfer of air mail to connecting carriers from one airport to another in major metropolitan areas has done much to speed delivery of air mail to as many as 120 cities with the curtailment of mail carrying passenger train service in recent years the post office department has effectively maintained mail handling capacities by establishing numerous new Highway post office and truck routes more than $95 million are being spent annually for the operation of Highway post office units bus and truck transports modern Transportation Innovations have appreciably improved the movement of mail from destination post offices to recipients 5,760 light maneuverable and functional Vehicles called mailers have been introduced in many areas throughout the country to improve the City Delivery Service whole fleets of these tiny transports Scurry off from post office loading docks and fan out in all directions with these units carrier routes have been enlarged the carrier's load lightened and both parel and other mail delivery can be accomplished at the same time [Music] through the development of lighter more efficient vehicles of all types your post office department has sharply cut the costs of truck Fleet operations and boosted the mail handling capacities of individual employees Suburban delivery has been improved too with the use of specially designed easy to maintain and safer to operate right-hand drive trucks rural service has been similarly improved now more than 1,400,000 new families are getting convenient rural mail delivery because service has been extended on the basis of two families per mile instead of four families no more driving down to the crossroads or into town for the mail for these families means more time to do vital chores and jobs in the field and in the barn this increase in such service has been made despite the fact that 5,800 post offices have been discontinued to produce an annual Savings of almost $9 million in virtually all of our nation's urban areas carrier service has been improved through strategic routing and scheduling to keep up with the burning pace of our growing cities and expanding economy the increase in carrier service efficiency has added the equivalent of 36,000 carriers serving 9, 300,000 more American families and more than 900,000 business concerns the carrier's job has been lightened too with work saving devices like caddy cards curiosity is an admirable attribute and looking is often enough to get the whole picture but when it comes to operating a system that moves male there is more to it than meets the eye it takes administrative procedures imagination thinking and it takes people the kind of people giant corporations seek out to train for their staffs the kind of people giant corporations keep on their staffs with inducements and advancement opportunities under the business-oriented leadership of its head the Bureau of personnel of the post office Department dedicated itself to the elevation of postal service employment to the level of attractive business and Industrial job opportunities programs of training that would qualify Personnel for advancements were initiated employee suggestions for the Improvement of Postal Service were urged as a result of the stress on employees suggestions new highs and the presentation of merit awards were achieved employees with special abilities were pinpointed and a more Discerning program of advancement was put into use career employees were selected for top executive position I and the historically insecure position of postmasters was made into a position offering extremely good security and working conditions were improved too with the installation of modern lighting air conditioning modern male handling methods and far less congested work [Music] areas the Postal Service became more attractive as a career when hospitalization benefits were introduced and the Bureau of personnel vigorously pursued a new salary structure and fringe benefits for employees wherever justified in relation to living costs and Industrial pay scales years ago administrative responsibilities for the Postal Service were centralized here in the post office Department Washington DC as the maale bottleneck grew and grew burdensome procedures red tape produced costly wastes and delays and strangled the processing of even routine business the need for positive corrective action was recognized and decentralization of authority was established Washington control was divided into 15 regions each had their own centers for all operations and transportation accounting functions too were centralized regionally and postmasters were relieved of payroll and other fiscal [Music] duties to accomplish the ultimate in mail delivery service the metro plan of mail distribution has been introduced in 81 major metropolitan areas serving more than 168 million people in the United States the specific objective of metro plan is next day delivery the letter that is mailed on the 3rd of the month will get there on the fourth of the month it has worked by means of a metro plan a number of post offices outside the major metropolitan cities are designated as concentration areas to which mail is Red from there rescheduled adjusted and extended Transportation routes bypass the main city post office and assure next day delivery inside the metro area as significant as next day delivery through Metro is in terms of postal advancement it may well be eclipsed in postal history by speedmail the companion of the space age speedmail is a marel of electronic communication that sends letters to their destinations at the rate of one letter every 4 seconds a completely sealed letter is coded for its destination and stamped with a date and time its deliv was started the ceiling edges of the letter are trimmed automatically and secretly protecting the sanctity of the mail's contents from this point on until it reaches its destination folded and sealed for delivery the letter will not be seen by anyone the trimmed letters are fit into specially designed cartridges at the rate of 60 a minute the cartridge can't be taken out of the machine until its letters are locked in securely then the cartridge is locked into the letter transmitting unit when the transmitting machine is started by electronic controls the letter receiver at the destination is automatically activated inside the transmitter the letter is automatically removed from the cartridge unfolded and scanned by a TV Camera likee VidCon tube for transmission the letter transmission is made possible by a series of electronic relays that carry it to a rooftop parabolic antenna which directs a microwave signal to the destination point there another antenna relays the microwave signal to receiving equipment which recreates the originally typed or handwritten message when the received letter goes through all of the receiving stages it comes out completely sealed ready for insertion into special windowed envelopes for delivery microwave transmission of mail will become a milestone in the history of mail delivery but it too will probably be overshadowed by a still greater Milestone speed mail satellite transmission on November 10th 1960 this significant Postal Service accomplishment was made a letter to the American people was sent by the Postmaster General from Washington DC to Newark New Jersey from Washington electronic images of the contents of the General's letter was bounced off echo1 a 100t high spherical satellite orbiting in outer space and relayed back to Earth in New Jersey the successful satellite transmission of a speed mail letter is certainly a foreshadowing of the fact that the United States postal system is on the brink of a new era of Untold Dimensions if all else is not then surely speed mail satellite transmission is indeed the lightning itself dragged in the train of the Pony [Music] Express farewell Pony rest upon your your honors be satisfied with them your destiny has been fulfilled a new and higher power has superseded you the