Postal Service


 

 

Summary

The United States Postal Service (USPS) is an independant agency of the United States,and it began in 1971 as an "independent establishment", responsible for providing postal service to every part of the United States.The USPS form was established by Benjamin Franklin in 1775. The Post Office Department was created from Franklin in 1792, and was transformed into its current form in 1971, due to the Postal Reorganization Act.1  The decline in mail amount, due to the increased in email usage, has forced the postal service to look to other sources of finance, while lowering the costs to maintain good financial stability. With hundred thousands of employers the hundred thousands of vehicles,it's the second-largest employer in the United States and the operator of the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world.2 The USPS must serve all Americans, regardless where they are from or where they at. They must be served and must be of good quality.They have special access to letter boxes marked "U.S. Mail." It competes against other postal services that are not supposed to deliver to letter boxes.3

 

History

When the postal service first began, Benjamin Franklin became the first Postmaster General in 1775 according tothe timeline of post office history. A couple of years later he joined the cabinet. This lead to the creation of Railroads helping us to receive mail faster or send mail faster. It would still be at a slow pace, but it would be much faster than using the Pony Express which came a litle after the railroad post routes. The routes would eventually end, but no time soon after it started. In 1847-1852 postage stamps and stamped envelopes were created. This was a couple of years before the Pony Express became one of the most common ways to recieve or send mail. Before this, the railroads would only deliver certain kinds of mail like packages and letters. Most of them did not even except packages. In 1862 when sending bigger packages became available, many people started to use the service, especially for holidays and birthdays, to send gifts or other important packages. Eventually the Railroad post offices were opened in 1864 to help with organization of the United States mail. . There is one reason that special handling, special delivery, airmail, etc. was created and that reason seems to be so the packages can get there fast and to the correct place with out a problem. Zip codes and express mail were also started to distinguish the difference between the mail of different cities. If the person has their zip code on the mail, atleast you will have the area correct, even if the house is not. Express mail helps to get prompt deliver. It helps for people that need to send abrupt mail or people who need to recieve things with a short period of time. There are many more important dates in the history of the post office, its tthese dates that made the biggest differences though.

                                                                  

Railway Mail Service

In August 1829, the Stourbridge Lion completed the first locomotive run in the United States, on the Delewars and Hudson Canal Company Roadin Honesdale, Pennsylvania.4 No more than  month later would others begin to complete their runs also. As soon as the speed of reaching the destination increased and found more positives, the horses that used to power the first trains were no longer needed for service. The value of this new transportation was recognized by the Departments of the Post Office, so they decided to go to the highest power and suggest ideas on a faster and more accurate services. There was only one railroad company that was conducting the service for the first months of the new operation. Remeber, when railroad mail began, mostly letters were sorted in the train cars, and they were not equipped to distibute any other mail, such as packages. It was the Transportation Act that made all railroad routes in the United States mail routes, and it increased in usage. The video above, shows the inside of the train and what the different cars were used for.

 

The Pony Express

Pony Express ran through parts of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California. It started in 1860. In the first half of the nineteeth century, according to Mary Bellis the writer of "The Role in United States Post Office", the United States began to flow steady in the newly found areas of the nation. The year that gold was discovered n California, was the year that California started to recieved carried mail. Their success of finding gold, made them more important to the nation because they were seen as worth something, when bbefore that they were not even looked upon. Three to four hours is enough time to get a letter from the east to California, but this was rarely the case. The Californians felt isolated and they wanted to be a part of the postal nation and they also had more people there that were willing to use the service, than they did in other areas were the services were set up already. In 1860, William H. Russell, who was a transporting pioneer, advertised in the newspaper that they wanted young men that would ride pony's, and they must be willing to risk their lives daily, and they preferred orphan children with nothing to lose.5They wanted the orphans just in case something bad happened to them during this time of what was basically an experiment of new ways to deliver news and mail. Russell did not get backing from the Senate Post Office or the Post Roads Committee for an express route starting at St. Joseph. Missouri and ending 2000 miles out.6lot of people thought that this route was impossible to do because of weather conditions. Russell, thought that the route was good and he was ready to start his own express without the proper contract, just to prove it to the people that he was right. He and his partners then built relay stations and readied existing uses for one according the Pony Express writing. The relay stations were very useful and he would switch horses every 10 - 15 miles. The Pony Express was operated as a private business for a short period of time. It would only deal with the government during this period. The Pony Express was popular when the telegraph became popular also.

 

Airmail

Airmail was said to be one of the Post Office Department's most important role in transportation. Today this role is a lot less important than it used to be. In 1911 ans 1912, the department authorized fifty practice flights as an experiment at fairs, carnivals and air meets in twenty five states.7 These were the flights that convinced them that airplanes can carry a lot mail and get it to different states at a fast pace. The army gave planes and pilots to the post service for this experiment. They helped them out because they were giving the new pilots learning experience in flying planes across the country. They used these planes and pilots for the first three months of the experiment. In 1918, the post office took over all of the operations in the air. The early planes had no instruments, radios, or other navigational aids.8So pilots had to fly from the directions that they were given from someone or that they knew themselves. Departments started to install radio's in 1920. Each flying field had one. Congress was impressed by the expansion of the service and began to create things like towers, beacons, searchlights, and boundary markers for the planes.14 These were installed all over the country. They also installed luminescent instruments, navigational instruments, and parechute flares in the air planes. In 1922, the department was awarded the Collier Trophy for important contributions to the development of aeronautics, especially for its safety record, and for demonstrating that it was possible to fly at night as stated in one of my sources. Communications, navigation aids, and multi- engined aircraft were not all blown on to the transpotation scene. In fact, they  tey are the cornerstones on which our present world wide transport structure is built, and they came, one by one, out of our experience in daily, uninterrupted flying of the mail."9 

                                                                                                                                                                  

 

Zip Codes

The way that mail changed, the increase in the usage of the postal service and the invention of transporting mail, set off an increase in costs and created the Zoning Improvement Plan or zip code.10 In 1930, the Post Office still moved a lot of its domestic mail by railroad. There were more than 10,000 trains to keep track of. By 1963 when the railroads mail service slowed down, the United States made a lot of changes. With the depression and the war happening, mail slowly changed. In 1962, the department wanted to develop a coding system. This was an idea that was under consideration for more than a decade, which means they knew about it before they used the idea.11  July 1, 1963, the zip code would begin.

References...

 

[1]http://inventors.about.com/library/blmailustimeline.htm?p=1

 

[2]http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmailus2c.htm?p=1

 

[3]www].centennialofflight.gov/essay/Government_Role/1918-1...

 

[4]http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmailus3.htm

 

[5]http://inventors.about.com/od/xyzstartinventions/a/zipcode.htm?p=1

 

[6]www.akdart.com/postrate.html

 

[7]http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmailus7.htm?p=1