Postcode revolution starts in Norwich

[johnnyp]

http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/content/ ... 3A22%3A870
Postcode revolution starts in Norwich


01 January 2009 08:00



A revolutionary scheme that has become part of our everyday lives after starting in Norwich 50 years ago is preparing to celebrate its anniversary.

Royal Mail is launching a campaign in the New Year to mark the 50th anniversary of the humble postcode, which transformed the way our mail is handled and was first trialled in Norwich.

While steps towards a system were taken in 1857 when London was divided into 10 districts with letters representing their compass bearings it was in 1959 that Norwich got the first full six-digit postcode system in response to a growth in the volume of mail after the second world war.

Letters were meant to have the code NOR for the city and then three characters representing a street, while larger businesses had their own code.

The city had eight new sorting machines which were adapted so that operators could simply key in the postcode to sort letters to each delivery round.

It was not as successful as expected with less than half the letters bearing postcodes while greater specification relating to the last three characters was necessary.

But the trial eventually gave way to the national postcode system and Norwich was renumbered in 1974.

In 1985 Optical Character Recognition systems were introduced, which automatically read the postcodes and printed out the phosphor dots, instead of them being printed manually. Ten years later, the phosphor dots were replaced by a code based on pink dots.A spokesman for Royal Mail said there are now more than 1.7 million postcodes across the UK, covering 27 million addresses, with postcoded letters read by Royal Mail's machinery and sorted 20 times faster than by hand.

Father Christmas has his own postcode - SAN TA1 - and receives 750,000 letters every year to his North Pole address.

But millions of people still forget to put the postcode on letters and cards with almost a fifth of non-business letters, cards and packets not bearing a full or accurate postcode.

The new year campaign will stress the importance of using the letters and numbers to help post and parcels get delivered on time.

Giles Finnemore, of Royal Mail's address management team, said: “Although the postcode is celebrating its 50th birthday in 2009 it's still as important today as it ever was to help Royal Mail sort and deliver mail quickly and efficiently.”