MACHINES have taken over from men at many places of work today.

Now there are computers and conveyor belts, robotics and automation doing the jobs that once took hundreds of man hours to complete.

The Post Office is one such business where letters, bills and parcels are today all sorted by technology, thanks mainly to the one line post code.

But turn the clock back and the job used to be carried out by sorting clerks who, without looking, had the experience and know-how to ensure every envelope went into its correct pigeon hole. at their counter.

And they did it with speed, too, knowing exactly where on their desk each individual piece of correspondence should go.

This picture from the Telegraph archives shows Blackburn sorting office at work a week before Christmas in December 1953.

The pigeon holes are crammed with festive cards and each one corresponded to one street or delivery area – hence there’s one for Ewood, another for King Street, one for Ainsworth Street, one for the Infirmary and another for Burnley Road.

Along the bottom are slots for other East Lancashire towns and outlying areas, such as Darwen, Rishton and Langho, which would have to be sent on for delivery.

And as the sorters finish one pile of cards, one of their colleagues brings another which, no doubt, had just been collected from one of the corner street letter boxes around town.