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History of zip codes to help in dating all toys

The below information was taken from the following website:  www.arikah.net/encyclopedia/Zip_code and explains the timeline of postal codes.

Background

The postal service implemented postal zones for large cities in 1943. For example:

John Smith
3256 Epiphenomenal Avenue
Minneapolis 16, Minnesota LOL

Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
200 2nd Ave. South #358
St. Petersburg 1, Florida

The "16" in the first example and "1" in the second is the number of the postal zone within the city.

By the early 1960s a more general system was needed, and on July 1, 1963, non-mandatory ZIP codes were announced for the whole country. Robert Moon, an employee of the post office, is considered the father of the ZIP code. He submitted his proposal in 1944 while working as a postal inspector.

The post office only gives credit to Moon for the first three digits of the ZIP code, which describe the region of the country. In most cases, the last two digits coincide with the older postal zone number, thus:

John Smith

3256 Epiphenomenal Avenue

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55416

Wikimedia Foundation Inc.

200 2nd Ave. South #358

St. Petersburg, Florida 33701

In 1967, these were made mandatory for second- and third-class bulk mailers, and the system was soon adopted generally. The United States Post Office used a cartoon character, Mr. ZIP, to promote use of the ZIP code. He was often depicted with a legend such as "USE ZIP CODES" in the selvage of panes of stamps or on labels contained in, or the covers of, booklet panes of stamps. Curiously, the only time the Postal Service issued a stamp promoting the ZIP code, in 1974, Mr. ZIP was not depicted.

ZIP+4

In 1983, the U.S. Postal Service began using an expanded ZIP-code system called "ZIP+4", often called "plus-four codes" or "add-on codes."

Wikimedia Foundation Inc.

200 2nd Ave. South #358

St. Petersburg, FL 33701-4313

Furthermore, recently the Postal Service started a "Find a ZIP Code" feature on its website, which provides an address format that is most compatible with its optical character recognition, or OCR, scanners:

WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION INC

200 2ND AVE S # 358

SAINT PETERSBURG FL 33701-4313

A ZIP+4 code uses the basic five-digit code plus an additional four digits to identify a geographic segment within the five-digit delivery area, such as a city block, a group of apartments, an individual high-volume receiver of mail or any other unit that could use an extra identifier to aid in efficient mail sorting and delivery. Use of the plus-four code is not required except for certain presorted mailings. In general, mail is read by a multiline optical character reader (MOCR) that instantly determines the correct ZIP+4 code from the address and — along with the even more specific delivery point — sprays a Postnet barcode on face of the mailpiece that corresponds to 11 digits. This technology has greatly increased the speed and accuracy of mail delivery and, in turn, kept costs nearly constant for over a decade.

For post-office boxes, the general (but not invariable) rule is that each box has its own ZIP+4 code. The add-on code is often either the last four digits of the box number or, if the box number consists of fewer than four digits, enough zeros added to the front of the box number to make it a four-digit number. However, there is no uniform rule, so the ZIP+4 code must be looked up individually for each box.

It is common to use add-on code 9998 for mail addressed to the postmaster (to which requests for pictorial cancellations are usually addressed), 9999 for general delivery and other high-numbered add-on codes for business reply mail. For a unique ZIP code (explained below), the add-on code is typically 0001.

Below is a copy of the history of the Post Office Making the Mail Faster that we show from the below website:

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmailus4.htm

History of the Post Office Making The Mail Faster - Zip Codes

Despite the growing transport accessibility offered by the airlines, the Post Office Department in 1930 still moved the bulk of its domestic mail by rail, massing, re-sorting, and redistributing it for long distance hauling through the major railroad hubs of the nation. More than 10,000 mail-carrying trains crisscrossed the country, moving round the clock into virtually every village and metropolitan area.

The railroads' peak year may have been 1930. By 1963, fewer trains, making fewer stops, carried the mail. In these same years, 1930-1963, the United States underwent many changes. It suffered through a prolonged and paralyzing depression, fought its second World War of the 20th century, and moved from an agricultural economy to a highly industrial one of international preeminence. The character, volume, and transportation of mail also changed.

The social correspondence of the earlier century gave way, gradually at first, and then explosively, to business mail. By 1963, business mail constituted 80 percent of the total volume. The single greatest impetus in this great outpouring of business mail was the computer, which brought centralization of accounts and a growing mass of utility bills and payments, bank deposits and receipts, advertisements, magazines, insurance premiums, credit card transactions, department store and mortgage billings, and payments, dividends, and Social Security checks traveling through the mail.

In June 1962, the Presidentially appointed Advisory Board of the Post Office Department, after a study of its overall mechanization problems, made several primary recommendations. One was that the Department give priority to the development of a coding system, an idea that had been under consideration in the Department for a decade or more.

Over the years, a number of potential coding programs had been examined and discarded. Finally, in 1963, the Department selected a system advanced by department officials, and, on April 30, 1963, Postmaster General John A. Gronouski announced that the ZIP Code would begin on July 1, 1963.

Preparing for the new system was a major task involving realignment of the mail system. The Post Office had recognized some years back that new avenues of transportation would open to the Department and began to establish focal points for air, highway, and rail transportation. Called the Metro System, these transportation centers were set up around 85 of the country's larger cities to deflect mail from congested, heavily traveled city streets. The Metro concept was expanded and eventually became the core of 552 sectional centers, each serving between 40 and 150 surrounding post offices.

Once these sectional centers were delineated, the next step in establishing the ZIP Code was to assign codes to the centers and the postal addresses they served. The existence of postal zones in the larger cities, set in motion in 1943, helped to some extent, but, in cases where the old zones failed to fit within the delivery areas, new numbers had to be assigned.

By July 1963, a five-digit code had been assigned to every address throughout the country. The first digit designated a broad geographical area of the United States, ranging from zero for the Northeast to nine for the far West. This was followed by two digits that more closely pinpointed population concentrations and those sectional centers accessible to common transportation networks. The final two digits designated small post offices or postal zones in larger zoned cities.

ZIP Code began on July 1, 1963, as scheduled. Use of the new code was not mandatory at first for anyone, but, in 1967, the Post Office required mailers of second- and third-class bulk mail to presort by ZIP Code. Although the public and mailers alike adapted well to its use, it was not enough.