In the 1950s, it seemed mail volumes would rise forever. How was the mailman to keep up. Well maybe if machines could sort the mail at speeds impossible for humans. Worth a try, but lets get it done before the election. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
There are two interesting things about this stamp issue. They used the architect conception of the Providence, Rhode Island new automated post office even though the actual post office was built. It looked better in imagination. Also notice the issue date, just a few weeks before the national election of 1960. The in power Republican Administration was doing things for you, Rhode Island. Not enough apparently, in 1960 Rhode Island voted Democrat.
Todays stamp is issue A605, a 4 cent stamp issued by the United States on October 20th, 1960. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether used or unused. There is a few copies were the red writing on the bottom was left off, this version is worth $250.
Project Turnkey was started by the new Eisenhower Administration in 1953 as a project to automate the backroom sorting of mail at the post office to cope with rising mail volume. A Democratic administration would have instead seen the opportunity to hire more reliably Democrat voting postal workers. A company called Intelex was brought in to design and manage Project Turnkey and the Providence site was chosen as a laboratory to determine what would work. The project cost over 20 million 1950s USA dollars.
The project opened with much fanfare. There were indeed machines that could sort letters and parcels by size, class and destination. The machine assigned codes that were then entered by humans into a computer. The new complex actually employed 100 more postal workers than the previous facility in addition to 170 workers in the employ of Intelex but was designed for a much higher mail capacity.
The project was not a success. The sorters were not speeding up the process as hoped. Then there was an embarrassment coming from a local stamp collector. Hearing that no human eyes were viewing the mail, the collector sent several pieces of mail through the center with old stamps from Czarist Russia on them to see if the sorters would catch the fraud. The mail went through and then the stunt was publicized in the local newspaper. This inspired copycats and the post office claimed it solved the issue by adding a step where each piece of mail is viewed by one of their employees. The new Democratic Administration ended Project Turnkey, fired Intelex, and the building reverted to a standard post office that still exists. New Postmaster General J. Edward Day blamed the failure on mismanagement of the previous administration who he said tried to design a system to match their pre-written press releases. He dubbed Project Turnkey, Project Turkey.
Well my drink is empty and to be honest reviewing old projects is fun whether they worked or not. Come again soon when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.