The Post Office’s instructions for “finger gymnastics” contain 12 thorough steps, starting from “shaking every joint of the limp hand”, through to elaborate explanations of how to bend, stretch and shake every finger. These exercises were designed to prepare the digits of a 1950s “postal coder” starting their shift. Workout complete, coders would punch in the postcodes of more than 2,000 letters an hour – until the system became fully automated around the mid-90s.
Many of us use our postcode every day, from entering it on a satnav to shopping online, without giving those letters and numbers much thought. A new exhibition at the Postal Museum seeks to change that. Sorting Britain: The Power of Postcodes takes in the beginnings of our area codes in ingenious Victorian London, to the 1930s and the marvellous red brick Post Office Research Station which started to develop automation, to the 1960s strikes as workers dealt with the incoming mechanisation and low wages, to the 1980s advertising campaigns and, now, the way we’re profiled by our postcode. Like a stamp on a letter, this exhibition is small but efficient and covers a lot of ground.
