Achieving Discounts -- New Numbers, Same Advice

In the 1980s, the Postal Service took advantage of optical character recognition (OCR) technology to begin sorting mail automatically. The address on letter mail was “read” to generate a barcode representation of the destination ZIP Code that, in turn, allowed a barcode-reading sorter to distribute the mail with little human involvement. Despite Congressional measures to delay expanding the 5-digit ZIP Code, a longer form, with nine and later 11 digits, was introduced to allow finer sortation on postal equipment.