Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and we're here with Zippy. Mister Zip also known as Jerry sitting in for Dave, who has nothing to do with post office and this is short stuff.
That's right. I'm sure we probably talked about zip codes to some degree in the post office.
In our episode. Yeah, on zip codes.
It was usps. We didn't do it on zip codes. Okay, good, but we're gonna talk a little bit about zip codes. That thing on the envelope, that's well, it depends on how long it is. It depends. Well, we'll get to what those numbers mean because some of them are a
little longer than others. If you want to talk about the origin of just postal codes, it seems to be from London because in eighteen fifty seven they started up with ten different sections of London like North, South, WC, Western, Central, just and the whole point of all this is to you know, it's called a zone improvement plan for a reason. It's to improve the way mail was delivered and just to make it easier to sort and get out.
Yeah, and it's whether it's eighteen fifty seven or twenty twenty four. Zip codes and anything to do with zip codes is something that's a consequence of more and more people showing up into a more and more densely packed area. It gets harder to deliver the mail the more people
there are. So if you can specify with greater detail, you can make sure that that letter gets the right person even faster, because if you just put the if you just put the address on there and throw it out into the street, it's going to take a while for it to get where it's going.
Yeah, well, that's basically what we did until July first, nineteen sixty three in the United States. We had you know, the street number and street and then the city and the state, and that was it. It feels like it would be very weird for my eyes to see an address with that of zip code because we grew up with them. But you know, if you're around before sixty three, it's sort of like us with the area codes now on telephones, Like we grew up without area codes that you had to dial first too.
Oh yeah, for sure.
But there are forty one thousand, six hundred and forty two zip codes in the United States. That number is not necessarily always growing, because when I looked at the source material, they're actually more than there are now, So I guess they get combined or they shrink and things change. Sure, but right now there's, like I said, forty one thousand, six hundred and forty two.
And the whole thing started back when a fresh faced, up and coming young postal inspector from Philadelphia named Robert Moon decided that it was time to improve the organization at their mail center, and Moon came up with a ZIP code for use in Philadelphia that was so sharp and so whiz bang that the USPS totally ripped them off in fired him so that he couldn't tell anybody that they stole his idea.
I don't believe that.
You shouldn't. But he did come up with the concept of zip codes, and the USPS did take his idea and run with it. But I don't think that they fired him and tried to shut him up. I think they're like, yeah, great, great idea, kid.
Yeah exactly. His only had three digits at first, so he could identify sort of the region where it was going and then the city basically will will get probably in the second half get to what they mean now. But I did mention it was an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan. They did get ZIP the USPS that has got it trademarked, but they let it expire. I guess when they realized that, like, what's anyone going to do with the word zip? It really matters? You know?
Yeah I don't. I don't get it at all. But yeah, so, I mean, if you wanted to use zip code yourself, then the Post Office is not going to sue you for that because they can't.
He's some hot merch.
So the before July first, nineteen sixty three when zip codes debuted, and I'm sure for a while after until people started using them, because it wasn't like an immediate like left hand driving day. Was it Sweden or Denmark? Like that happened on a specific minute and it was That's the way it was. From that moment on, zip codes were introduced and it took a little while to
catch on. But one of the reasons why zip codes were introduced was again because more and more people were moving into cities and at the time, if you mailed a piece of mail, it usually went through about seventeen stops from where you dropped it off to where it ended up, and zip codes help improve that because it narrows the location that it's going to head toward on its journey, and at each stop, the information located in the zip code tells the people at that stuff, Oh,
it needs to go this way, and then it needs to go that way, and it needs to go here, and then now it needs to go to this specific address.
Yeah, the zip codes should be first on the line if you put it that way, you know.
Yeah, for sure, somebody really dropped the ball. I'm looking at Robert Moon.
I guess they know where to look, though, Like you said, no one used it a lot at first, and it
had to gain steam. And one of the ways they you know, they got the PR team on it, the marketing team on it, and they they had mister zip or Zippy like you kind of joked about Jerry as a little little character in the nineteen sixties and seventies when they had new zip codes coming out, and they even had ethel Merman do a commercial singing to the tune of Zippity DooDah to literally just sort of drive the idea that like, hey, zip codes are here to stay. Everyone get on board.
Yeah, honey, everything's coming. What movie is that from?
I mean I want to say airplane.
Yes, it was airplane. Somebody echecked her with a sedative while she was singing it was great.
All right, let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about how you decipher these things on all those dumb numbers. Mean right after this, well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck.
I want to learn a thing or two from josh Am. Chuck.
It's stuff you should know.
All right, Okay, Chuck, it's time for the most contentious part of this short stuff. We're going to talk about deciphering those numbers in an American ZIP code It's own Improvement Plan code M. The first number is pretty non controversial. We're in agreement. That stands for the national area, and there's nine. No, there's ten national areas, number zero to nine. Zero starts in the northeast, probably in honor of Robert Moon, and then nine goes up the West coast, over to
Hawaii and up to Alaska. That's the first number. So wherever that first number is, it's going to hit a specific region of the United States that's called the national area.
Yeah, but you hit it on it with region. That's the way people talk, and that's how people say it.
Okay, that's the first number. What about the second number? The next two numbers.
The next two numbers, they start drilling down even more. So the next two are going to be that is specifically the region.
Oh oh wait, but how can the first number and then the next two all be the region?
Well, it drills down. You use that first number to get you to the general region, and then you go down to an even smaller region in the next two numbers.
Yeah, also called a sectional center.
Yeah, the SCF right there on our page.
And then the sectional center can also be like a large city itself. Yeah, so sure nine is like California, and two is Beverly Hills, maybe Los Angeles. Because the one to oh would be the next two numbers. That's the actual post office that serves that area, or group of post office that serve that delivery area.
Yeah. And again it all depends on how big of an area you live in, because once you get to the plus four system, which came about in nineteen eighty three, you're drilling down even more. Depending on how big of a place you live. The first two numbers of the plus four, which is separated by a dash from the initial five the street or building, and then on the second or the last two numbers of the plus four, it can even go down to the side of the
street or the floor of building. So cool, as you'll see, if you have a building big enough, you will have your own plus four, potentially with what floor of the building that letter is going to go to.
Yeah, In other words, the United States Postal Service knows exactly where you are.
That's right. And there are plenty of buildings with their own postal code, including I guess the champion of them all, which is the White House that has two zip codes.
Yeah, beat that, you can't do it. Apparently the President's family, their personal private mail has its own ZIP code, and then there's the regular one for the White House.
That's right.
Not just the White House. There's also, like you said, individual buildings. If it's a building big enough, it'll have its own first two numbers of a plus four. My friend, there are buildings so big they have their own ZIP code itself.
Yeah, I mean the Empire State Building obviously, the World Trade Center had its own ZIP code. Sacks. Fifth Avenue in New York City even has its own zip code.
Yeah, because sometimes it's not just big, it's important or illustrious or glamorous. In the case of Sex.
Burning Man, this might be the fact of the show for me. The Burning Man Festival has its own zip code while it's for two weeks out of every summer.
Yeah, pretty cool, huh.
Eight nine, four to one to two.
They're sometimes they're very temporary too, you know how you said. Sometimes they grow, sometimes they retract the total number of zip codes.
Yeah.
An example of that was in two thousand and five when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Oh yeah, and a lot of people ended up in Houston, and there were so many there was such an influx of climate refugees from New Orleans in Houston that they had to house them in the Astrodome for a while, and to make sure that those people could get mail and send mail, they were given their your own zip code for the Houston Astrodome for a little.
While seven seven two three.
H Yeah, there's a bit of trivia for you.
I grew up with three eight eight.
Oh. Mine was uh, let's see, Oh man, I wish you hadn't just said that, because now I don't remember mine.
Really, I figured that'd be sort of drilled in like your home phone.
No, I've got the rest of the address and my home phone. It's just the zip code I can't remember.
Well, you could probably get it there.
And also it just doesn't matter. There is also another way that they get pared down to is if your town catches on fire for half a century. Oh sure, like in Centralia, Pennsylvania, where the famous coal fire has been burning for decades now, the Postal Service said we're throwing in the towel on you guys in nineteen ninety two and revoke their zip code.
The supposedly the wealthiest zip codes are seven six two oh Alpine, New Jersey, which I got to look that up, but it just must be like a tony bedroom community for New York or something.
Does not make any sense.
And three three one oh nine Fisher Island, Florida. That sounds very exclusive. It is not nine o two one oh in Beverly Hills.
No.
I'm sure there's a lot of money there, but it's not the wealthiest.
No. Sorry, everybody, sorry to burst your bubble. Nine O two one o fans.
I gotta figure out what's going on in Alpine, New Jersey.
Yeah, for real, it's it's it's surprising. There's another thing too. Remember you talked about the PR Department getting going on getting people to use zip codes in the sixties. Yeah, one of the people they tapped was Santa Claus himself. They gave Santa his own zip code nine ninety seven oh one and said, little kids, if you want to send Latyers of Santa, that's Santa's new zip code, so
put it on there. It's pretty right. I remember specifically in one of our early Christmas holiday specials we talked about how Canada gave Santa his for that country too, And I think it's eight zero h zero h zero, so it spells ho ho ho oh.
Okay. So, by the way, in real time, I just looked up Outpine, New Jersey real quick. Okay, fewer than two thousand residents, but they're all rich.
Yeah, that's kind of skewing the demo, you know what I mean?
Oh, for sure, Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan, Stevie, wonder Jah, Rule, Lil Kim. So. I thought it might be like Elon Musk lived in that county and that was the only person or something. But it must just be a very limited number of people and they're all loaded Tony.
Like you said, it's like a per capita thing. That's such a great use of that word. I like Tony, if you like Tony. Oh wait, I was gonna end this like a regular episode. But it's not a regular episode, Chuck, which means that it just stops.
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