Mail by Missile

Last Saturday marked the busiest day of the year for the Post Office as people scrambled to get packages to people they love in time for Christmas. But despite the long lines and more expensive stamps, one might not notice that there are fewer Christmas cards getting sent this year, 11% less in fact. Some blame the recession, others blame e-mail.

But in the Post Office's heyday, it wasn't e-mail or a bad economy that troubled your local mailmen. It was the Soviet Union. Sputnik had been launched, and every angle of the Federal government clambered to make their department relevant in the upcoming space race, the Postmaster included.

Postmaster Arthur Summerfield proposed that America display its missile prowess by showing that it could so accurately fly a missile that it could do something as simple as delivering mail. This is why, in 1960, a Regulus 1 missile was loaded onto the USS Barbero and launched toward Florida with 3,000 pieces of mail in it.

While missile mail made the delivery (after the letters landed, were offloaded, and taken to a regular post office), the concept never quite caught on. It could be that folks didn't like the idea of missiles hurtling toward their local PO Boxes, or that the costs were too high, or that it was a tragically knee-jerk reaction to something the Ruskies had done.

Whatever the case, mail missiles (mail bombs?) failed to detonate as an idea in the 1960s, but its that sort of thinking the Post Office may need to stay relevant in the years to come.