The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

As early as 1837, when railways were yet in their infancy, it was suggested to the Post Office by Frederick Karstadt, a son of one of the surveyors of the Department, that much time would be saved if some of the necessary business of sorting and preparation for delivery of letters were performed on the train. On the 6th January 1838, a carriage was run as an experiment on the railway between Birmingham and Liverpool. The carriage used for the purpose was simply a horse-box temporarily fitted up as a sorting office. The experiment was decided to be a success, not only by officials, but by the press and the public. In the words of an enthusiastic writer at the time, “Here is a specimen of the exhaustless ingenuity which bids fair to annihilate time and space, an improvement which enables the Post Office to work practically double tides— in other words, to duplicate time by travelling and working at the same instant.” We smile at writing of this kind in these days, when the familiarity of the operations has robbed us of all sense of wonder, but the language is not very different from what we frequently hear to-day when the achievements of the aeroplane or wireless telegraphy are recorded. To our grandfathers the Travelling Post Office was a miracle of the day, and it is not difficult, if we know the social life of that time, to understand the way in which they must have speculated on its possibilities.