Examples Of Barcode Obliterator Markings On Cover

From the depths of my USA postal history collection, I bring to light a couple covers to share with the club. They both have "OCR" in a circle with bars to obliterate an incorrect barcode at the bottom of the cover. OCR is the acronym for Optical Character Recognition, or Optical Character Reader.

The first cover was mailed 30-July-1993 from Cedar Rapids, Iowa to Des Moines, Iowa, but due to an incorrect barcode it ended up in Fort Dodge, Iowa where it was cancelled 2-August-1993 on the reverse. I think the OCR Barcode Obliterator marking was applied in Fort Dodge. What do you think?

The second cover has a similar, but different style obliterator. It was mailed 5-August-1993 from St. Paul, Minnesota to Des Moines, Iowa and routed to an unknown post office where the OCR Barcode Obliterator marking was applied. The reverse has a partial postmark, but the city is off the edge.

Does anyone else happen to have other examples of these OCR-in-circle-with-bars markings on cover? Do you have a Linn's article or further info on them?

Comments welcome,
Linus

Excellent intuition. There is indeed a Linn's article!

Bar code obliterators were written about by the late postal historian Richard B. Graham in his April 28, 1997 Linn's Column titled "Bad addresses may drive post office loopy". I loaned him a stack covers which he used to illustrate in the column, reproduced here from the article, since I cannot locate the originals at the moment:




I was able to find a remainder stack of very similar ones:



On a tangent about the ORC machinery, Dick Graham's article specifically references Paul V. Roling's article in the August 1985 issue of the American Philatelist titled "Here's How Those Optical Character Readers Move the Mail".

John

Thanks for showing some of the other types I had not seen before. The spiral-type handstamps and the XIXIXIXI types are new to me. I probably had that issue of Linn's in paper form back in the day, but I sadly had to send my "Great Pile" (as the late ikeyPikey used to say) to the green recycle bin. There were a lot of good articles in Linn's Stamp News. It was my main source of information before these stamp forums popped up, but I no longer subscribe to it.

Linus

Linus, I tried to send you an email through the SCF system and it bounced. -John

John, I just sent you an email, try a reply to my email.

Linus

I think that Bobby has been working on the SCF email functionality and it may not currently be working. As a work-around, I have sent you guys an email with each other's contact info.
Don

Thanks Don.

John, I received your email, thank you for the information, I will print it out and put it with my two covers.

Linus