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valerief

(53,235 posts)
6. And the ZIP code was created to handle the massive influx of business mail made possible
Mon Jun 8, 2015, 12:09 PM
Jun 2015

by the computer. So businesses created the need for ZIP codes.

The social correspondence of the earlier century gave way, gradually at first, and then explosively, to business mail. By 1963, business mail constituted 80 percent of the total volume. The single greatest impetus in this great outpouring of business mail was the computer, which brought centralization of accounts and a growing mass of utility bills and payments, bank deposits and receipts, advertisements, magazines, insurance premiums, credit card transactions, department store and mortgage billings, and payments, dividends, and Social Security checks traveling through the mail.


http://inventors.about.com/od/xyzstartinventions/a/zipcode.htm

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