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==History==
In the immediate post-war era, Canada experienced explosive growth in urban population as veterans returning from [[World War II]] moved into the cities looking for work in the [[newly industrialized country]]. This created logjams at mail routing offices that handled the mail for what used to be much smaller cities. Whereas the formerly rural population spread out the sorting and delivery of mail, now sixty percent of all the mail was being sorted at only ten processing stations,<ref name=v108>Vardalas, pg. 108</ref> leading to lengthy delays and complaints that reached all the way to the [[Canadian House of Commons|House of Commons]].
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During the 1940s the Post Office Department had introduced "postal zones" in certain cities to help spread out sorting into regional offices. For instance, as of 1943 [[Toronto]] was divided into 14 zones. Letters with zones could be routed directly to the regional sorting office, skipping one sorting step and speeding the delivery of the mail. Using the zones for addressing was not mandatory and was up to the sender to include this if they knew it, and the Post Office urged users to add the new codes to their mail.<ref>"Urge citizens include zones in addresses Would Speed Delivery of Mail, Postoffice Department Contends", ''The Globe and Mail'', 26 August 1943, p. 4</ref>
At the time, the primary constraint for the number of pigeon holes a sorter could serve was the length of the human arm, which limited the stack of holes to a cabinet about 4 feet on a side. A number of companies sold sorting equipment that overcame this by moving the mail on a conveyor to a large array of bins. One of the most widely used at that time was the [[Transorma]], which supported up 5 sorters at a time and sorted to as many as 300 destination bins. In practice, the Transorma simply changed the limiting problem; while the number of bins was now essentially unlimited, there was no way the sorters could be expected to remember so many routes. The limitation changed from physical to mental.<ref name=v108/>
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Maurice Moise Levy had recently left the [[Defence Research Board]] to set up a Canadian subsidiary of [[ITT Corporation]] known as FEMCO, short for "Federal Electric Manufacturing Co." Turnbull met with Levy in April 1952 and asked him if a sorting machine was possible, Levy immediately answered "yes." Levy followed this up with a proposal for a $100,000 contract for detailed engineering development. After the NRC examined the proposal and passed judgement that it seemed possible, Turnbull pressed for development of the system. Under further pressure from the opposition and problems staffing the Toronto office, Postmaster General [[Alcide Côté]] announced the project in July 1952.<ref name=v110>Vardalas, pg. 110</ref>
As chance would have it, Levy had recently been fired by ITT and was hired by Turnbull. He set up the small in-house Electronics Laboratory with the promise of having a prototype machine ready for testing in three years. In early 1953 he visited companies looking for potential development partners, and through this process he met with Arther Porter, head of R&D at Ferranti Canada.
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In February 1955 Levy announced the system to the world at a conference in the U.S., claiming that it was able to process 200,000 letters per hour. Although the computer system did appear to be able to meet this claim, they were having serious problems with the non-computer portions of the project.<ref name=v115>Vardalas, pg. 115</ref>
Levy and Turnbull pressed for development of a production system, while Porter was suggested they move to a [[transistor|transistorized]] version of the computer. Porter had made the same proposal to the Navy in order to cure the size and reliability problems they were having the tube-based DATAR, and had signed a contract for a transistorized DATAR in early 1955. Since the Navy was paying for much of the development of the circuitry, the new machine would be inexpensive to develop. Porter offered a $65,000 contract for the new computer, known as the '''Route Reference Computer''', which Turnbull signed in August 1955.<ref name=v115/>
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Turnbull's estimate proved overly optimistic, and development of the mechanical portions of the system dragged on until further funding was curtailed and Levy's Electronics Laboratory was finally shut down. Turnbull quit the Deputy position in 1958.<ref name=v118/> Their initial failure using automation slowed the adoption of newer systems, and Canada was one of the last major western nations to introduce [[Postal Code]]s, which didn't appear until the 1970s.<ref>"Postal Code", ''The Globe and Mail'', 20 February 1970</ref>
Although the mail sorting machine was eventually broken up for scrap, it was highly influential outside of Canada. Lewis' original suggestion that some sort of invisible or see-through ink be used to store routing information on the front face of the letters is now practically universal, as is the basic workflow of the address being converted to [[bar code]] form as soon as possible by typists and then sent into automated machinery for actual sorting.<ref>"Mail-sorting system reads typed addresses", ''Electronics'', Volume 51 (1978), pg. 61</ref><ref>"Mail Sorting", ''Product Engineering'', Volume 39 (1968), pg. 67</ref> Use of bar-coded ZIP codes printed directly at the sending point when using [[postage meter]]s became mandatory in the U.S. in 1973.<ref>"Code of Federal regulations", U.S. Federal Register Division, 1974, pg. 191</ref> During the 1960s the use of [[optical character reader]]s replaced typists for letters with typewritten addresses, and in the 1990s, handwritten ones as well.
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