MSA O/N November 2023 - "Letterbox/Letterboxes"

Don_ih

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Mick Fagan said:
May be a bit hard to post a letter if you weren't tall enough, or am I misunderstanding things?
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It is actually pretty tall - but not so tall a person with arms couldn't reach it. A person in a wheelchair, however, might have difficulty. I think the letter slot is probably at about 66 inches off the ground. (ADA guidelines would have that no higher than 48 inches.) (ADA is "Americans with Disabilities Act" and we copy it in Canada.)
 

absalom1951

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Mick Fagan said:
Absalom, an intriguing post office, quite the rural setting I'm assuming?

Those square glass windows were the rage in the late 50's through to the early 70's in Australia.
Click to expand...

Yes, with a population of around 50 I'd consider this a rural setting. Other than a Landus grain elevator there's not much in the town. As with many other Iowa towns at this time of year there's a big yellow pile of corn visible for at least 7 miles on the north part of town.
 
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Mick Fagan

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Today I was clearing out some photographic stuff in my darkroom that had been piled up under one of the benches; when I chanced upon an old postcard. Actually not really that old, around 1995, but it is a picture of, "Victoria's first cast-iron posting box, 1858."

Going on the wheels on the semi-trailer parked in the background, this is a recent photograph. This is a posting box I'm unfamiliar with, although I have a suspicion I may have seen posting boxes like this in the 1950's.

This has nothing to do with the monthly competition, but I thought this may be of some interest going on the set subject for this month.

Edit: I live within the greater city of Melbourne, which is in the State of Victoria. It is this Victoria that is being mentioned.

 

drkhalsa

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How were the letters retrieved from that?
 
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Mick Fagan

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Bernard, that looks really good, I'm wondering if the blue colour of the letters is, or was, a legal requirement?

I'm asking as I remember the first time I was in France I found it really easy to find house numbers, they were all blue and of a certain size, or at least they appeared to be of a certain size.

I found out later that house numbers were required to be of a certain colour and size; at least that is what I seem to remember. It was around 42 years ago, though!

One can only imagine the dreams and love letters that have passed through that letterbox.
 

bernard_L

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Mick,
Thank you for the kind words. The white-on-blue style for house numbers is still prevalent (~50% of images returned by a search in a non-scientific experiment) but is not (any more?) an obligation.

As for the letterbox, definitely the yellow still is a Post Office color. The blue maybe too. Note the font of the "S" letters, a survival of Art Deco, although the box I would guess is 60's.
 

dourbalistar

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This is nothing to do with the MSA, but it is somewhat tangentially related. @Mick Fagan and @bernard_L's comments about house number styles reminded me of an article where the author walked every street in his postal ZIP code (nearly 200 miles by their estimation) and cataloged the different types and styles of house numbers:

I Walked All 1,114 Blocks of My ZIP Code Just to Catalog How People Style Their House Numbers

Believe it or not, I learned a lot.
slate.com
 
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Mick Fagan

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Snusmumriken, that one that almost looks like a rocket is very interesting, the letter slot looks like it could take an A4 envelope, but it would seem that the letter box itself would struggle to swallow anything bigger than a post card.

Going on the fineness and rendering of tones of your images, I'm guessing FP4+ but I could be wrong.
 

snusmumriken

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No, actually these are all Double X.

I’m clueless about the first one. I just came across it lost in a hedge in Devon. It says Post Box, but even if you could reach it, where do you put the letters?
 

Andrew O'Neill

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Another from coal mining series. Company family home for an employee of Miike Co.. Many sat abandoned and untouched for years. About 2002, they were all
levelled. Holga TMY 400

 
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Mick Fagan

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Quite an interesting one Andrew. It looks like the letter slit at one point in time, had a weather surround, which was probably picked up for scrap metal.

I found out something interesting the other day when I was discussing this thread with some friends over a coffee. One of the friends was an old postie, who went on to working in the machinations of Australia Post.

He mentioned that when Australia Post upgraded the entire country with a new letter/parcel posting system; it was decided to give every address in Australia a unique address on their computerised system. The detail started at the postcode level, which is governed by a local area, then down to the street level, then which side of the street, and exactly where using Longitude, Latitude co-ordinates, with finally; whether the letterbox hole was a slot or a slit.

As the sorting (in the main) was done by machinery, the letters were sorted in the exact order the postie would be walking, cycling or driving with the final instruction being either a slot (vertical) or slit (horizontal).

He mentioned that no postie ever needed the slot, slit information, and it was quietly dropped.
 
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Mick Fagan

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Just a reminder that we are at the business end of the monthly assignment, only 1¼ days left in sunny Australia until the end of the month.

However, I'll wait until you lot up there cruise into December.
 

peter k.

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New ~ Experimenting with Semi Stand Development
Here's a 35mm image - Trix 400 @ 3200 - f11@125
Developed in d-76 1+7 dilution for one hour
Lightly sharpened

 
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calphotography

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Was looking through some older color negatives and found this and decided to try and print it. Kodak Ultracolor 100 35mm Printed 8x10 Ra4 Fuji Crystal Archive. Had to fix the cyan cast in post. The town of Thayer came to be in 1882 and the post office has been in continuous operation since 1881. The town is located just north of the Grand Kankakee Marsh.
 
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Mick Fagan

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Calphotography, interesting colour cast, looks like it needs a lot more red added to the filtration.

I'm surprised at the similarity of this post office to an earlier post office picture. It seems that in the USA there must be a set plan for rural post office buildings.

On another note, this is a great depiction of what is a normal everyday requirement for most people around the world.

I had no idea where in the USA Thayer was, so I looked it up and was surprised to find that Indiana is in the north of the USA. For whatever reason, I have always been under the impression it was a middle to lower state.

Always learning.
 
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Mick Fagan

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It is now December the second pretty much around the world. Time to bring the assignment to a conclusion; and the winner is:- Warden, with his "Welcome to Philly".

A wonderfully guarded letterbox, complete with a wire mesh and concrete, set (literally) in a bluestone wall.

Congratulations!!!!

Over to you for next month.
 

warden

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Wow, thanks for the honor! I enjoyed seeing all the creativity shared in this thread. I’ll give some thought to a new MSA topic and start it tomorrow.
 
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