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Bilateral letter scale, collections of the Maison Losseau. 19th Century letter scale used at the Mangōnui Post Office. A letter scale is a weighing scale used for weighing letters in order to determine the correct amount of postage. Until the 1990s most letter scales were mechanical, but today electronic scales are the most common.
The ship fee, including the ship rate on letters for delivery at the port of entry, were on a per letter basis, rather than weight. The United States issued its first postage stamps in 1847. Before that time, the letters' rates, dates, and origins were written by hand or sometimes in combination with a handstamp device.
The No. 10 envelope is the standard business envelope size in the United States. [6] PWG 5101.1 [7] also lists the following even inch sizes for envelopes: 6 × 9, 7 × 9, 9 × 11, 9 × 12, 10 × 13, 10 × 14 and 10 × 15. Envelopes accepted by the U.S. Postal Service for mailing at the price of a letter must be: Rectangular
In May 2007, the United States Postal Service (USPS) adopted dimensional weight, calling it "Shape Based Postage Pricing". This rate system is designed to charge more for lightweight items, and also to recover costs involving manual sorting and handling, since many postal machines are built to handle flats.
The precise origins of the dimensions of US letter-size paper (8.5 × 11 in) are not known. The American Forest & Paper Association says that the standard US dimensions have their origin in the days of manual papermaking, the 11-inch length of the standard paper being about a quarter of "the average maximum stretch of an experienced vatman's arms". [2]
Postal service in the United States began with the delivery of stampless letters whose cost was borne by the receiving person, later encompassed pre-paid letters carried by private mail carriers and provisional post offices, and culminated in a system of universal prepayment that required all letters to bear nationally issued adhesive postage stamps.
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Thus the weight, and the associated postage rate, can be approximated easily by counting the number of sheets used. ISO 216 and its related standards were first published between 1975 and 1995: ISO 216:2007, defining the A and B series of paper sizes; ISO 269:1985, defining the C series for envelopes