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HomeMy WebLinkAboutClinton News-Record, 1972-10-05, Page 15Clinton, Ontario Second Section Thursday, October 5, 1972 107 Year No. 40 Clinton News-Record mOwen Soun NOH Hanover • • Markdale NOC NOG NOK to Stratford Kitchener— Waterloo NOB NOM NOL Woodstool 0 z Brantford 0 z NOA Dunnville aSarnia NON St/Thomas •London NOP uChatham Huron Central Commencement Open house at Conestoga Conestoga College's Huron Centre at Vanastra was toured by nearly 200 people who came to see the facilities available at the post-secondary school education centre. English teacher Bruce Blorkquist explains a new method of teaching reading. (News-Record photo) Brenda Turner delivers the Valedictory address at the com- mencement exercises held at Central Huron Secondary School recently. (Photo by Jack Hunt). Principal R. Homuth presents an Ontario Scholar Diploma • to Cameron Manning at the Commencement held at Cen- tral Huron Secondary School recently. (photo by Jack Hunt) The science room at Conestoga's Huron Centre at Vanastra was a popular spot at the Open House last Thursday night. Here Bernard Bil!son, back left, explains how students question and then conduct their own experiments. A calf's skeleton is in the foreground. (News- Record photo) Postal code commences this month Canada's postal CODE, unique in the world, has been introduced to facilitate the sor- ting of mail, especially in larger, congested Post Offices, and to expedite the handling of rapidly growing mail volumes as the Post Office moves into the age of mechanized operations, The CODE is being in- troduced gradually across the country, based on the following schedule: Ottawa, April 1971; Manitoba, October 1971; Saskatchewan, February 1972; Alberta & N.W,T., April 1972; Eastern Ontario, July 1972; Southwestern Ontario, October 1972; Metropolitan Toronto, November 1972; Eastern Quebec, January 1973; Central Ontario, February 1973; Nor- thern Ontario, March 1973; Western Quebec, April 1973; Metropolitan Montreal, August 1973; Atlantic Provinces, British Columbia & Yukon, Early 1974. The postal CODE will become an integral part of every Canadian address. In just six characters - a combination of letters and numbers - there is enough information to represent a person's address right down to one side of a city street, and sometimes even further, It is these six characters, con- verted to binary code, which our machines will use to read the address and sort the mail. The CODE itself never changes - at least not until 2000 A.D., the minimum 30-year life span planned for the CODE, and probably not for long after that - although an individual will change his CODE should he Move, The CODE is allocated according to street and street number, and not to individuals, so it stays put. The postal CODE takes the form of ANA NAN where "A" represents a letter of the alphabet and "N" a number from 0 to 9. The first three Characters are separated from the last three by a space. A typical example is N6A 2W1 which represents a section of London, Ontario, We'll use this example throughout the ex- planation. For the sake of simplicity, the first three characters can be referred to as the Area Code and the last three as' he Local Code. THE AREA CODE In urban areas, the Area Code describes an area about the size of 25 letter carrier routes. In crowded downtown areas, this would be equivalent to about 120 city blocks. In residential areas, it would be even bigger, In rural areas, the Area Code denotes an area in which there are fewer than 200 small post offices. Using our example, in London "N6A" designates an area bor- dered by the Thames River on the North and on the West, the CNR and CPR tracks on the South, and Wellington Street and Colborne Street on the East. The first character of the Area Code, always a letter, represents a very large area-- sometimes an entire province, or part of a province. For example, the letter "N" represents South- western Ontario. The other letters have been allocated as follows: "A" for Newfoundland, "B" for Nova Scotia, "C" for Prince Edward Island, "E" for New Brunswick, "0", "H" and "J" for Quebec, "K", "L", "M", and "P" for the rest of Ontario, "R" for Manitoba, "S" for Saskat- chewan, "T" for Alberta, "V" for British Columbia, "X" for the Northwest Territories and "Y" for the Yukon. The second and third charac- ters, in combination, serve to divide this larger area into parts of a city or a group of rural towns and villages. A zero in the second position indicates a rural area, while the numbers 1. to 9 in this position mean an urban area Where there is letter carrier delivery, Thus "N6A" is, by definition, an ur- ban area, 1'HE LOCAL 000E The Local Code, the second half of the postal CODE, pin- points the address even further. In urban areas, the three characters, taken together, can designate one side of a city street between intersections, a large business firm, an apart- ment building, a large office building or a form of delivery from a post office -- rural route, post office boxes, general delivery, etc. So when new equipment is in- stalled, by using the postal CODE, the Post Office will be able to sort mail right down to these destinations. In the case of a large apartment building or business office which has its own CODE, mail can be sorted for this one destination in a separate bundle. Similarly, in a residential area where one CODE covers one side of a street it will be possible to sort all mail for the people on that block into one bundle which the letter carrier then takes and delivers. Where the Local Code represents a post office box, the machines will sort this mail into another separation from which the letters are taken and placed directly into the proper boxes. To go back to our example, "N6A 1W 1" designates the South side of Sydenham Street, between Talbot Street and Saint George Street in London. This illustrates just how much detail the CODE provides. Here is a typical address in this postal CODE area: Mr. D, Brown, 147 Sydenham Street, London, Ontario, N6A 1W1„ The postal CODE appears as, the last item of the address, whenever possible on a separate line, In rural areas where there is no letter carrier delivery, the Local Code denotes a specific post office. Each CODE in- dicates a different post office, The system has been designed with enough flexibility to adjust for population shifts and growths, New postal CODES are held in reserve for this even- tuality. Confusion caused by let- ters and numbers which resem- ble each other is avoided in two ways: (1) the first, third and fifth characters are always let- ters, and the others always num- bers; (2) letters such as I and 0 are never used, in any position. The Post Office will be in- stalling automatic letter sorting equipment over the next four years in the 15 largest cities which account for 85% of all mail in Canada - Halifax, Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton, London, Windsor, Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria. Even- tually, machines will be in= stalled in some of the smaller offices. Toronto and Montreal together account for 44% of the mail. The Post Office is spending a considerable amount of money on the CODE, but it is certain from experiencesin other coun- tries and from studies done here in Canada, that it is worth every penny. With rising mail volumes and increasingly faster methods of communication, a more sophisticated sorting systems -- and coding -- is the only way the Post Office can keep costs down and still provide efficient and reliable service. The mechanized sorting system will only work for those letters bearing the Postal CODE. Letters without the CODE will be processed manually. Here is how a letter will be handled once the machinery is in operation: On arrival ut the Post. Office, letter mail goes into machines that cancel the stamps and Wen- tify which mail goes into the. automatic sorting system and which will be handled manually. The machines can handle most regular-sited mail, but oversize or bulky envelopes, or parcels, have to be treated by hand. Next the mail goes into a "reservoir stacker" which simply controls the flow of mail going into the coding desks, the next step in the operation. The coding desk looks like a large typewriter and is equipped with a keyboard. The coding desk operator reads the postal code on the envelope and depresses the appropriate keys on the keyboard. (Envelopes without Postal CODES are channelled out of the system and sorted by hand.) The infor- mation is fed to a computer which identifies the Postal CODE and activates a printing device in the coding desk. A fluorescent "bar code", prac- tically invisible to the human eye and written in computer language, is then imprinted on the envelope. The coded letter is then con- veyed automatically to the letter sorting machines. These machines cap process up to 26,640 pieces of mail an hour. The letter is scanned by an optical device which reads the fluorescent bar code and, with the help of the computer, iden- tifies the destination of the letter and deposits it in the proper destination bin. At the appropriate hour, the letter is collected, along with other mail Tor the destination, and sent on its way. At the destination, the letter goes directly to another letter . sorting machine (if the destination is one of the 15 mechanized cities) and the same process repeats itself with the letter being sorted directly to a letter carrier's walk. At the destination, the letter does not have to ,o through the coding desks again, since it has retained the bar code im- pression. In the above example, only the letter carrier would Sort this letter by hand, before he leaves on his walk in the morning. If the destination is not one of the 15 cities with mechanized equip- merit, the letter will be handled manually at the destination point. Windsor OR Pelee Isla