Luke Judge

In this series of blog posts, Peter Sutton, PhD candidate researching the post-war history of technology and industrial relations in the British Postal Service, offers some reflections on the history of the modern postcode. The significance of the postcode and its origins in the post-1945 era are considered followed by some archival examples tracing different aspects of its design along its journey from a specialised engineering concept to a universally recognised geographical referencing tool.

Poster promoting postcode usage, circa 1978

We think about postcodes regularly. Perhaps, as it gets lost in the noise of everyday activity, we aren’t aware of how often we do it or at least how many ways we benefit from them. In our correspondence, by ‘phone, in the car and in all manner of ways online, we engage with them in the everyday sense. A moment’s thought reveals the wide-ranging uses of postcodes, and yet, as a tool, it has many more hidden and no less important applications. After all, they are today used in demographic profiling, monitoring crime levels, determining insurance premiums, data analysis and marketing techniques – not to mention their role in house prices or catchment areas for schools and healthcare. In fact trying to list all applications of the postcode has been made virtually impossible by the internet where ordering a pizza or a beanbag can be done with little more than a postcode and a credit card. The geographers Jonathan Raper, David Rhind and John Shepherd have pointed to its diverse usage whilst acknowledging its postal origins in their book Postcodes: The New Geography