While early forms of a mechanical mail sorter were developed and tested in the 1920s, the first sorting machine was put into operation in the 1950s.
The advanced equipment needed for the job is essentially a large camera that works fast enough to accommodate the high-speed sorting machines.
The room was full of shelves and automatic sorting machines were mounted on the upper edges of the racks.
But large ones can be damaged by their trips through mechanical sorting machines.
Ms. Wallace said she believed she contracted the disease when an automatic sorting machine jammed.
As that vast sorting machine has become increasingly complex, negotiating it has become arduous and anxiety-provoking.
The cards were punched, corrected, sorted by hand (there was no sorting machine), and printed on the white side of green bar paper used for accounting.
She started in 1963 as the operator of "one of the first sorting machines."
The Post Office experimented with electromechanical sorting machines in the late 1950s.
An electronic sorting machine is imported by a user under a hire contract, the main terms of which are: