Found An Odd (To Me) Perfin Useage..

I guess I hadn't realized that "perforated initials", which is clearly a wrong description for this usage, could be utilized for a lot of stuff. Here is a WWI manual on Submarine warfare and it has, what I consider anyway, a pretty elaborate perforated sentence/Identifier mark.

I think it's pretty darn cool myself! Does anyone else have an example of this type of Non-Philatelic usages?

Here is the link and images.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/WW1-GERMAN-...em3a7c738c66

These were commonly used by libraries as a theft deterent.

Well that didn't work out too well did it Russ? -lol

Seriously though, that gizmo/machine to do a perforation matrix that large in a book must have just been one mean heavy machine! I mean you know how large the private stamp ones were (I'll provide pix of a few below), even though in that day they was touted as "portable", much like a typewriter in those days. If it weighed under 100 pounds you can perceiveably move it with you..

Having been a librarian in one of my previous lives, I can attest that Russ is correct; many libraries used these perforations in an attempt to deter theft. The perforaters were only about 25-35 lbs. in weight and were usually left in the back room where books were prepared for shelving. Perforating specific pages was part of the preparation.

Donald

Thank you that's really neat that you have first hand experience with those. Thank you.

The numerals and letters in the Amount line of payroll checks used to be perforated, too.

As stated previously, many libraries used the perfin type of identifier for their books. In fact, a brief web search of various books available for download on Google provides these illustrations:

Great stuff! I never realized how many uses the perforated tagging had. It seems the idea was very versatile albeit a bit destructive..I wonder if Cummins made those machines too, or if they had a lot of competition? I bet perfin specialists would know all the in's & out's of the different machines used?