The Luton Experiment

A view of two of the coding desks in operation at Luton.

The machines functioned by feeding letters forward from a feed stack visible at the rear of the upper letter using a rotating sprral.
Experienced operators could simultaneously read the address of the upper letter while entering the extract code for the lower letter.
Having keyed the code a transport key was struck which caused the lower envelope to pass through the code printing mechanism to a stacker while the upper letter dropped down into the coding position exposing the next letter in the top window. The machine was then ready for the next operation cycle.
As with all the British Post Office machines the rate at which letters were coded was controlled by the operators ability up to a maximum of 110 items a minute.

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