The Middlebury register and Addison County journal. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1883-1885, 1883-02-02
How Postal Cards are made.


at factory at Castleton, on the east
bank of the Hudson river, about eight
miles below Albany. A correspondent
describes how they are made. "The
cardboard" he says, sis received from
the paper-mill in sheets twenty-one
inches by thirty, size just large
enough to be cut up into forty postal
cards. The sheets are first printed on
an ordinary large cylinder Job print
impress, there being in the factory two
Hoe presses and one Taylor. The i'm
preston is taken on plate containing
forty cards faces with stamp, the mon
ogram US, the scroll and words Postal
Gard, and the untruthful printed line,
Nothing but the address can be placed
on this side Thus when a sheet of
cardboard is run through the press, it
comes out with forty postal cards COM
pletely printed, ready to be cut up into
The one cent missves with which the
public is familiar. Any two of the
presses is sufficient to supply the de
mand without being rushed. From
the presses the printed sheets are taken
to cutting machine, where they are
rapidly cut into strips containing ten
cards each. They are fed between roll
ters, on which there are four circular
blades. The cutting into strips is done
US fast as tolerably active boy can
pass in the sheets. From the first cut
ting machine the strips are taken to a
second cutter, where they are fed
through rollers with circular blades.
set as far apart as the width of postal
card. Thus ten cards are produced
ready for use from every strip that is
run through the cutter. They drop
into ten pockets made of tin, and con-
structed on a shaft. The boy who
feeds the strips into the cutter passes
twenty-five through and then calls out
tally Three girls remove the cards
from the tin pockets, pack them in stalks
of twenty-five each, and wrap each
package about with the paper band
with which everybody is familiar who
buys his cards in quantities of twenty
five and upward. In addition to empty
ing the pockets and banding the cards,
one OF the three girls has to turn the
pocket shaft every time the feeder calls
out tally, and another has to count the
cards in any one pocket so as to see
that the count Of the boy who feeds in
the strips is correct. Every twenty
five strips produces $50 cards, delivered
equally in ten pockets. II any one of
them contains twenty-five cards, each |
OF the other nine must contain like
number. In order to equalise the labor
among the three girls, the one who
turns the pocket shaft and the one
who counts the contents of one of the
pockets empty and pack up each three
pockets. The third girl is, therefore,
required to empty and pack up the con-
tents of four pockets, with nothing
else to do. The yellow paper band that
is wrapped about each package of
twenty-five cards is ready gummed, so
that the three pocket tenders are able
to work with alacrity, as it is evident
that they must do in order to stack up
all the postal cards used in the United
States. The packages of twenty-five
each are placed in piles of ten each,
and two of these piles are packed into
a strawboard box, each box thus con-
tanning 500 cards. The strawboard
boxes are made rapidly on the spot by
an ingenious machine. The whole
machinery for making postal cards. af-
ter the cardboard is received from the
paper-mill, could be operated in room
thirty feet square. This, of course.
would not be sufficient for storing ma
terial and stock"