Time Of Mailing Missing In Cancel Dial

This1937 first-flight cover from Walla Walla, WA does not have a time of mailing in the cancel dial, but has an 'M' in its place. Does the M stand for morning? or, perhaps, midday? Give the centered placement of the M, it appears that the time omission was intentional.

A Pendleton, OR receiving cancel on the shows the cover received at 6pm on Dec 4, 1937.

Thanks.

DonSellos

The "M" in AM or PM is the abbreviation for Meridian (Ante and Post), thus Noon.

The air distance from Walla Walla to Pendleton is just under 35 miles.

meridiem

Not on this side of the pond.

Latin root is meridies. The Brits do have the geographical prime meridian located through England.

AM and PM stand for ante and post meridiem. Meridian is used for 'noon' in American English, but the abbreviation remains Latin.

In British English, a meridian is an (imaginary) line of longitude. 'Prime' has little meaning. This could have been a meridian passing over Ulaanbataar, if a Mongolian scientist had picked it. As it is, someone in England defined it and then someone else in England defined it a few metres away.

Meridian is from the French.

But that, still does not change that AM and PM are Latin abbreviations and meridies does not become meridian in Latin.

The OP's question is about a US postmark, for which the AM, PM, M, Noon and Midnight have all been covered in court cases regarding postmarks. Both "Noon" and "Midnight" are moments which are not either AM or PM but exist between what is called AM and what is called PM. The legal wrangling in the USA will not apply beyond its jurisdiction.

In America, MERIDIAN is the spelling be it slang for noon or in the proper Astronomical definition from which mid-day comes. However, thanks to the artificial clock adopted world wide, Local Meridian in the USA or anywhere else is almost never at 12 noon on the local clock even when showing meridian on the local sun dial. And I i wrote before the root is Latin meridies.

We, the USA, won the war of Independence from Great Britain, so we get to spell things our American English way, if we want. But with the move away from BC and AD. I suspect AM and PM will equally fall for wokeness eventually.

And lets not get started about daylight saving time which further screws up when meridian and noon occur in a location, especially in the few countries worldwide which acknowledge daylight time. Heck neither within the USA nor within Europe can do folks agree to use it or not.

EDIT: While I am majority ethnically much different than it is, my last name (surname) is of Dutch derivation. Now it is time to play with my covers....

Noon it is. Thank you responders.

DonSellos

I find this cover interesting from a local perspective, as I live in Pendleton. My guess is that you could fly from WW to Pendleton in less than 20 minutes or drive there in 45, so I'm not sure why a CAM would ever be very cost effective. Are you sure this first flight was between those two airports? Could you show the back stamp?

Looking at pages 639-641 in the 5th edition of the American Airmail Catalog (vol 2) about CAM 5, it describes this as an added intermediate stop at Walla Walla on the existing branch between Pendleton, OR and Spokane, WA It also describes some confusion in sending some of the mail in the wrong direction. This appears to be such a piece.

Pendleton to Spokane makes a lot more sense. So WW was the stop in between. A quick check of ebay shows a number of these covers and the machine cancels indicate 12 noon. I also spotted one with a Spokane back stamp of 3:30 PM. 3+ hours would be quite a slow flight between those two points, but perhaps it took a while to process the mail.

Well, the cachet says Walla Walla, so reasonably sure. I'm not a first flight collector, cover collected for other reason. Image of cover's reverse below.

The backstamp here is NOT a part of documenting the first flight, but rather following the regulations to backstamp mail to the "general delivery", which was to be held for a certain amount of time before being returned to the sender to to the dead letter office. Regular airmail would not normally receive any backstamp, but often appears as a courtesy on philatelic flights.

I'm not an expert on first-day or event cancels, but it is surprising that this has not been pointed out regarding OP's question and cover. Point of "leaving off the time," and the look and feel of this "cancel" as approaching that of First Day of Issue cancels of the period...
I'm guessing OP did not see the world of 1930s cancel styles as "between post office working cancels, hand-applied or machine-applied, and favor or philatelic cancels for purpose of event or first-day covers."
(Also to clarify: not all "event" or "first day" covers were philatelically (that is, with attentive, separate handling) canceled; many were canceled by running through ordinary canceling machines or had ordinary in-use every-day hand cancels applied. But there were cancels "prepared" just for event or first day covers and they have a distinct appearance like the subject of the thread.)
-- Discuss as you wish.