Mr George N. Davison (Electrical and Electronic Engineering DIC 1933)

Provided by Mr Colin Davison

I have enclosed a copy of an article from the October 1962 issue of The Chartered Mechanical Engineer magazine, which includes a photograph of my father and a brief history of his education and career up to that time. He continued to work as Staff Engineer at the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill until his retirement in 1970.

My father was heavily involved in the mechanization of the postal service over a number of years, and was co-author of an article on this subject, which appeared in the Journal of The Institution of Electrical Engineers in July 1961. The information contained in this article formed the basis of a paper Mechanizing The Postal Service which was delivered to a meeting of The Institution of Mechanical Engineers in October 1962 in Norwich, a city where experimental post-code sorting was being undertaken at this time.

No doubt many further advances have taken place to revolutionise automation in postal sorting since the early beginnings, when my father played a significant part in its introduction.

My father was born in Sunderland in July 1910 into a family steeped in engineering. His father was a chief engineer on board ship in the merchant navy, and he clearly imbued a love of the sea, boats and ships to my father, and provided all the inspiration necessary from an early age to encourage him to embark on a career in engineering. It turned out to be a career of considerable achievement.

Outside of work my father had a lifelong interest in photography, was a keen gardener and, after he and my mother retired to Norfolk, became involved in Parish Council business for a number of years.

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Mechanizing the Postal Service*
by R. S. Phillips, MI.E.E .. and G. N. Davison, B.Se .. A.M.LE.E

The authors describe the mechanical aids that are being used in the postal service, including the public offices, the collection and delivery of mail, and the sorting office processes. The annual postal manpower costs are about £160 million and the field for mechanization is therefore considerable.

In the public offices, machines have been installed for issuing stamps, stamp booklets, stamped stationery, and postal orders.

Change-giving machines and parcel label issuing machines have also been provided.
In the transport field, 15000 petrol and diesel-engine vehicles are in use and also a number of electric trucks and vans for transporting bags of mail and delivering parcels. The post office underground automatic electric railway now carries 250 000 bags of mail, weighing 4000 tons, each week and consideration is being given to its extension to serve other London main railway stations. Considerable mechanization has been introduced between sorting offices and nearby railway stations, and this comprises systems of band conveyors, chain conveyors, chutes, and lifts.

Electro-mechanical machines of various types have been installed at Leeds, Bristol, Preston, and Worcester, to sort parcels into 24 selections, at a rate of 1000 parcels per hour, per operator.

Separation of letters from packets, the grading of letters according to their sizes, and the automatic facing and stamp-cancelling of the letters are all done on machines installed at S.E.D.O. in London and at Southampton. Similar machines are being provided lit Liverpool and Glasgow. Segregation of letters from packets is performed at a rate of 60 000 items per hour and the facing and stamp-cancelling at the rate of 20 000 per hour.

Automatic sorting of letters after their facing and cancellation is performed on electromechanical sorting machines installed at a number of offices. These machines sort letters into 144 boxes, according to destination, at a rate of about 3000 per hour.
Experimental machines for coding the addresses on envelopes in the form of a number of phosphorescent dots are in use at Luton. The advantage of code marking is that, after the first operation, all subsequent intermediate, and final sorting at the other offices en route can be done entirely automatically, by high speed sorting machines.

An experiment in making the public do the address coding is also in progress. People in Norwich are asked to head their writing paper with a six-character code as well as the usual address. Much of the letter mail into Norwich, therefore, also has the address code on the envelope and this can be quickly read and sorted by the staff who operate the sorting machines.

Investigations are being made into the possibility of reading the written address directly by a machine, but so far progress has not extended beyond the recognition by a machine of certain printed or typed characters.

Mr R. S. Phillips was educated at Pemmbroke Dockyard School and Regent Street Polytechnic. He entered the Post Office Engineering Departtment by open commpetition in 1924 and served in its Reesearch Station until /934 when he became Power Engineer. first in Manchester and then in Leeds. From /942 to /95/ he was Assistant Staff Engineer, Engineer-in-Chiefs Office, Power Branch, then Chief Regional Engineer. London, and since 1956 he has been Staff Engineer in charge of the Power Branch. He is a City and Guilds Silver Medallist in Telegraphy.

Mr G. N. Davison was educated at King Edward VI School, Stafford. Sunderland Technical College, and Imperial College, London. Apprenticed to the Sunderland Forge and Engineerring Co. Ltd, between /927 and 1932, he entered the Past Office Engineering Departtment by open compeetition in 1933. From 1934 until 1950 he served in the Telegraph Branch. Engineer-in-Chief's Office and from 1950 up to 1958 he was Assistant Staff Engineer, Research Branch, in that Office. Since then he has been Staff Engineer in the Branch, responnsible for research in postal mechanization.