Wellington Money Order & Savings Bank

The postcard below has a "WELLINGTON.SOM / M.O & S.B." single ring cancel dated 28th March 1906.

The picture side of the postcard depicts a horse with an extremely long tail and mane - hair extensions ??

Bristol IMPs: LQMs with error codes

LQMs were also used to flag errors - 'M' for Misread of the indicia ...

... plus 'U' for underpaid ...

... or 'S' for a missort.

Bristol IMPs: LQMs continued

Some non-meter mail also received an LQM.

LQMs were also misapplied to the front of mail, and some mail received multipls LQMs.

Bristol IMPs: Linear Quality Marks

Linear Quality marks (LQMs) were applied on the back of meter franked mail processed by an IMP, until 2008 when they were discontinued.  This first sheet gives an overview of the different formats.

LQMs could be at the bottom or top of the arrow ...

... or with the string above the date rather than after it ...

... and in 1996 changed format from having the date in letters to being in numerals.

Bristol IMPs: Address Interpretation

In 1997 a project was initiated to improve the 'read' quality of the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of postcodes in the addresses.  Following initial trials in late 2001 the new technology was trialled in production in Greenford in 2002 and then rolled out nationwide.

Mail items processed using AI technology were identified with an "A" prefix in the Letter Quality Mark (info coming soon on a blog near you !) or in the address/date block.

The "A" prefix was dropped in 2008 at the same time as the implementation of PostJet printers.

In 2001, along with the introduction of Royal Mail’s Address Interpretation (AI) system, video images from all Mail Centres of mail items with unreadable addresses are fed to one of four special handling centres for manual coding.  The four Manual Data Entry Centres (MDECs) are based at Doxford (Sunderland), Plymouth, Stockport and Stoke, and were each equipped with about 400 workstations, though with improved technology the staff at the MDECs has been reducing.

Bristol IMPs: Redrawn Slogans and different format Date Blocks

In order to rectify the truncated slogans, slogans that were repeated were redrawn as shown in the "MOVING HOME ?" examples below.

The Bristol IMPs continued to use different format date blocks - IMPs 1, 3, 5, 7 and 8 used a 6-line "T" under  "B" format, IMPs 4 and 6 used a 6-line "Taunton" centred format, and IMP2 used a 4-line "Bristol" block.

In November 2009 the IMPs standardised on one format, the 6-line "Taunton" centred form.

Bristol IMPs: Truncated Slogans

All of the IMPs started using the 6-line "Royal Mail / Bath Bristol / Taunton" date block apart from IMP 2 which used a "Bristol" 4-line block between May and November 2009.

Use of the 6-line date block caused some slogans to be truncated.

In the sheet below one can see three different formats of the date block:  two different 6-line blocks with "T" under "B" and with "Taunton" centred, and a 4-line block.  The slogan is OK on the 4-line "Bristol" block but is truncated on the top two.

Again the slogan is OK on the bottom 4-line "Bristol" block but truncated on the top two 6-line blocks.

Bristol IMPs: PostJet and Cueprint slogans

As the cutover of IMPs from Cueprint to PostJet printers continued, slogan cancels in two different formats were being used.  This first slogan was initially produced as "AIR DISPLAY / STAMPS ON SALE" rather than "AIR DISPLAYS / STAMPS ON SALE" but was corrected after a few days.  The top two covers below show the Cueprint slogans with 8 wavy lines, while the bottom is the PostJet slogan with 6 wavy lines.

The "Nominate your / hero" appears in a 3-line format on the Cueprint IMPs and a 2-line format on the PostJet ones.

"MOVING / HOME ?" also appears on the Cueprint printers.