Zip Code with the Swingin Six ~ 1967 United States Postal Service (USPS)

Hip intro to that newfangled ZIP Code thing.

Produced and Directed by Lee Rothberg. Performed by The Swingin' Six. Music and Lyrics by Steve Burnett. Script: Irve Tunick. Narration: Lee Stevens. Editorial: Syncrofilm. Animation: Coastal Film Service. Executive Producer: Ben Gradus.

Originally a public domain film, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_Code

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

A ZIP Code is a postal code used by the United States Postal Service (USPS) in a system it introduced in 1963. The term ZIP is an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan; it was chosen to suggest that the mail travels more efficiently and quickly (zipping along) when senders use the code in the postal address. The basic format consists of five digits. An extended ZIP+4 code was introduced in 1983 which includes the five digits of the ZIP Code, followed by a hyphen and four additional digits that reference a more specific location.

The term ZIP Code was originally registered as a servicemark by the U.S. Postal Service, but its registration has since expired...

The early history and context of postal codes began with postal district/zone numbers. The United States Post Office Department (USPOD) implemented postal zones for numerous large cities in 1943.[3] For example:

Mr. John Smith

3256 Epiphenomenal Avenue

Minneapolis 16, Minnesota

The "16" was the number of the postal zone in the specific city.

By the early 1960s, a more organized system was needed, and non-mandatory five-digit ZIP Codes were introduced nationwide on July 1, 1963. The USPOD issued its Publication 59: Abbreviations for Use with ZIP Code on October 1, 1963, with the list of two-letter state abbreviations which are generally written with both letters capitalized. An earlier list in June had proposed capitalized abbreviations ranging from two to five letters. According to Publication 59, the two-letter standard was "based on a maximum 23-position line, because this has been found to be the most universally acceptable line capacity basis for major addressing systems", which would be exceeded by a long city name combined with a multi-letter state abbreviation, such as "Sacramento, Calif." along with the ZIP Code. The abbreviations have remained unchanged, with the exception of Nebraska, which was changed from NB to NE in 1969 at the request of the Canadian postal administration, to avoid confusion with the Canadian province of New Brunswick.

Robert Moon is considered the father of the ZIP Code; he submitted his proposal in 1944 while working as a postal inspector. The post office only credits Moon with the first three digits of the ZIP Code, which describe the sectional center facility (SCF) or "sec center." An SCF is a central mail processing facility with those three digits. The fourth and fifth digits, which give a more precise locale within the SCF, were proposed by Henry Bentley Hahn Sr. The SCF sorts mail to all post offices with those first three digits in their ZIP Codes. The mail is sorted according to the final two digits of the ZIP Code and sent to the corresponding post offices in the early morning. Sectional centers do not deliver mail and are not open to the public (though the building may include a post office that is open to the public), and most of their employees work the night shift. Mail picked up at post offices is sent to their own SCF in the afternoon, where the mail is sorted overnight. In the case of large cities, the last two digits coincide with the older postal zone number thus:

Mr. John Smith

3256 Epiphenomenal Avenue

Minneapolis, MN 55416

In 1967, these became mandatory for second- and third-class bulk mailers, and the system was soon adopted generally. The United States Post Office used a cartoon character, which it called Mr. ZIP, to promote the use of the ZIP Code. He was often depicted with a legend such as "USE ZIP CODE" in the selvage of panes of postage stamps or on the covers of booklet panes of stamps...