What is a moose

[dionythicus]

This is from "Ask Jeeves"...

The ZIP in ZIP code is actually an acronym for "Zoning Improvement Plan."
In the early 1960s, the United States Postal Service felt the pressure of a huge increase in mail volume (mainly due to the advent of the computer and its effect on business mail). This increase, coupled with changes in transportation (a shift from trains to planes) and the rising cost of manual labor, forced the USPS to look at new automated methods of sorting and delivering the mail. The USPS also examined different coding systems to aid in the mechanization process.

After reviewing several new systems, the USPS officially adopted the Zone Improvement Plan in 1963. The plan assigned a five-digit code to every address in the United States. The code worked as follows:

The first digit designated a broad geographical area of the United States, ranging from zero for the Northeast to nine for the far West. This was followed by two digits that more closely pinpointed population concentrations and those sectional centers accessible to common transportation networks. The final two digits designated small post offices or postal zones in larger zoned cities.
On July 1, 1963, the ZIP code system went into effect. Then, in 1983, the USPS decided further improvements were necessary. They introduced the ZIP+4 code, which tacked another four digits onto the existing ZIP codes. With this additional number, the USPS could more accurately pinpoint a particular delivery location.

 

[Tula_Montage]

This is from "Ask Jeeves"...

The ZIP in ZIP code is actually an acronym for "Zoning Improvement Plan."
In the early 1960s, the United States Postal Service felt the pressure of a huge increase in mail volume (mainly due to the advent of the computer and its effect on business mail). This increase, coupled with changes in transportation (a shift from trains to planes) and the rising cost of manual labor, forced the USPS to look at new automated methods of sorting and delivering the mail. The USPS also examined different coding systems to aid in the mechanization process.

After reviewing several new systems, the USPS officially adopted the Zone Improvement Plan in 1963. The plan assigned a five-digit code to every address in the United States. The code worked as follows:

The first digit designated a broad geographical area of the United States, ranging from zero for the Northeast to nine for the far West. This was followed by two digits that more closely pinpointed population concentrations and those sectional centers accessible to common transportation networks. The final two digits designated small post offices or postal zones in larger zoned cities.
On July 1, 1963, the ZIP code system went into effect. Then, in 1983, the USPS decided further improvements were necessary. They introduced the ZIP+4 code, which tacked another four digits onto the existing ZIP codes. With this additional number, the USPS could more accurately pinpoint a particular delivery location.

Like I said, postcode makes millions more sense

 

[Serpwidgets]

Wow what a mess!

Postcodes were devised solely for the purposes of sorting and directing mail and rarely coincide with political boundaries. However, over time they have become a geographical reference in their own right with postcodes and postcode groups becoming synonymous with certain towns and districts. Further to this, the postcode has been used by organisations for other applications including government statistics, marketing, calculation of car and household insurance premiums and credit referencing.

There are several groups, mostly on the fringes of major population centres, who are affected in one way or another by the associations of their postcode. There is a movement in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead to change the first two characters of their postcodes from "SL" to "WM" for vanity, so as not to be associated with Slough. A businessman in Ilford wishes to have the postcode of IG1 changed to E19 as he claims customers do not realise his business is based in London.

Residents of West Heath in SE2 wish to have their postcodes changed to that of adjacent Bexleyheath, citing higher insurance premiums as reason to change. Some residents of Kingston Vale in London SW15 wish to have their postcodes changed to adjacent Kingston upon Thames for the same reasons. Residents of Denham, Buckinghamshire have postcodes associated with Uxbridge, which causes confusion to delivery drivers.

In all these cases Royal Mail has said that there is "virtually no hope" of changing their postcode referring to their policy of changing postcodes only to match changes in their operations. [5] Under this policy residents of the Wirral Peninsula had their postcodes changed from the "L" (Liverpool) to "CH" (Chester) group when a new sorting office was opened. [6]

Some postcode areas straddle England's borders with Wales and Scotland. Examples of such postcodes include CH4, HR3, SY10, NP16 and TD15. This has led to British Sky Broadcasting subscribers receiving the wrong BBC and ITV regions, and newly-licensed radio amateurs being given incorrect callsigns.

And...

The consequence of the complexity outlined above is that for almost every rule concerning UK postcodes, an exception can be found. Automatic validation of postcodes on the basis of pattern feasibility is therefore almost impossible to design, and the system contains no self-validating feature such as a check digit. Validation is usually performed against a copy of the "Postcode Address File" (PAF), which is generated by the Royal Mail and contains about 27 million UK commercial and residential addresses. However, even the PAF cannot be relied on as it contains errors, and because new postcodes are occasionally created and used before copies of the PAF can be distributed to users.

I wonder if the system also involves chimps sitting at typewriters. :grin01:

 

[Tula_Montage]

I wonder if the system also involves chimps sitting at typewriters. :grin01:

LOL I can't even remember my postcode... So none of that means anything to moi....

Sometimes i feel like a chimp sitting at a keyboard... Should I join the royal mail service?