seen from United States
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seen from United States
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Whether written on papyrus and delivered by messenger or composed on electronic screens and delivered by electrical pulses, the post has always been a product of social relations and material circumstances, just as it has always played a role in the production of those relations and circumstances.
Jay Caplan, Postal Culture in Europe, 1500-1800, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2016), 167.
Looking for friends with weirdly specific knowledge bases who can talk about the addressing system we currently use for mailing letters, or any such system used by any culture
Questions I have include but are not limited to: - When did London stop addressing things as “You know that guy, does business out of the King’s Head tavern? No, the one that sells horse. Yeah. You know his daughter? Take this to her.” and start using things like “10 Downing Street”
- Did Rome have an address system, or did they use the “you know that guy” method? Did Egypt? Did Koumbi Saleh?
- When did the Chinese invent an addressing system, and what did they use?
- Do you know of any cool or interesting systems either previously or currently in use?
In return for this information, I will listen to you infodump, be interested, ask questions, and be genuinely excited to hear everything you have to say.
New Learnt: Postal Systems
Check out the rest of Learnt on my website, Cheap Paper Art, and consider supporting my Patreon in the source link.
When a young man in Manhattan writes a letter to his girl in Brooklyn, the love letter gets blown to her through a pneumatic tube—pfft—just like that. — E.B. White, “Here Is New York”
Put into operation in New York in 1897 by the American Pneumatic Service Company the 27 mile system connected 22 post offices in Manhattan, and the the General Post office in Brooklyn. The pipes ran between 4 to 12 feet underground, and in some places the tubes ran along the subway tunnels of the 4, 5 and 6 lines. At the height of its operation it carried around 95,000 letters a day, or 1/3 of all the mail being routed through out New York city.
On at least one occasion, the tubes carried not just mail, but a live cat.
But wait, it gets better: the tubes are still in use!
