The ZIP Code was launched 60 years ago this month as part of a program of improvements to increase postal delivery speed. At the time, Americans were already struggling to adapt to three-digit area ...

Click to open image viewer. This plywood form was cut to the shape of Mr. ZIP, the marketing tool used by the Post Office Department to encourage the use of ZIP codes. The printed image of Mr. ZIP is ...

Mr. ZIP, informally "Zippy", was a cartoon character used in the 1960s by the United States Post Office Department, and later by its successor, the United States Postal Service, to encourage the ...

Over the summer, CBS News’s “Sunday Morning” did a piece celebrating the anniversary of the U.S. Zip code. A commercial explaining how to use the Zip code showed a sample letter addressed to “Anywhere ...

Postmaster General J. Edward Day, left, and two city letter carriers posing with Mr. Zip in 1963. (N/A/United States Postal Service.) Perspective by John Kelly While vacationing at his Texas ranch in ...

Previously on You’ve Got Mail, we looked at a few services that were designed to speed up the mail at various points along the way. But these improvements were all taking place on the USPS’ side of ...

These days, we’re all accustomed to using the ubiquitous five-digit ZIP code. But it wasn’t always so. In fact, there were no postal codes in use at all until thousands of U.S. mail workers left their ...