Question About A Postmark - New York, NY 10A - April 1, 1965

I am wondering what the 10A stands for in a New York City postmark from April 1, 1965. I've attached an image below. Is it a particular post office or postal zone? I would love to know where the postcard, which includes the postmark, was processed. Many thanks to everyone here!



*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

making a guess, post office at
LONDON TERRACE, NY Post Office
234 10TH AVE NEW YORK, NY 10011 - 9993

In large cities with more than one canceling machine at the main processing facility, the machines were typically numbered or lettered to tell them apart. Specifically to identify which machine needed ink or a date/time change, operator, etc. Your example is fairly early in the deployment of these facer machines in conjunction with the advent of tagging. These machines are large and could not be deployed to stations/branches.

Thus the 10A is a machine number. It does not represent a location within the city, but is an internal identifier. This is an example of one of the facer-canceler postmarks (early ones often referred to as a Pitney Bowes Mark-II), part of a 4-head machine system because the incoming flow of letters could be oriented in 4 directions. The machine looks for the tagging on the stamp and sends the mail piece to the canceling head corresponding to where the stamp is found.

Note the bar at the upper left, outside of the dial. This is a "trail bar" (for when the stamp is on the trailing end of the mail piece. A dial without one (or typically also with a lower trail bar), is from the lead dial. A full set of 4 cancels from this machine would have internal dial designations of either 10A and 10B, and either with or without the trail bars.

Additionally note the dial is New York "I", NY, which would have meaning to postal workers also.

This is an amazingly informative (and interesting) response -- thank you!

Agreed,

This, I cannot grasp.

I did an lengTheir explanation of how the facer-canceler works in this thread several years ago:
http://goscf.com/t/62681
Maybe it will help.

Thank you
this solved it ..."a typical 4-head facer-canceler machine "
I have always presumed facer cancellers were single head.

John, that is very clear. Thank you. One question though, why do I sometimes get a letter in the mail where the stamp is uncancelled and the cancel is upside down on the bottom?


Peter

The machine "saw" something that triggered it and sent the letter through a canceling head. It will end up as a mis-faced letter in a normal stack as it goes on to the zip code readers. At some point it is automatically or manually faced, but is seldom back-tracked in the system to get canceled correctly. Nor was the manual facing prior to tagging 100% error-proof. I have seen greeting cards with bright colored envelopes get a cancel in each corner.