Over 25 years ago, I received a phone call from a friend, who had just gotten a job working for Federal Express, now simply known as Fed Ex.  An ex-nuclear sub jockey, he had landed a position in the new Zap Mail Division.

What was Zap Mail, you ask?

Per the New York Times, in an article published January 18, 1985:

The Federal Express Corporation said today that its recently introduced two-hour mail service, known as Zap Mail, has lost about $83 million since its inception. But James Barksdale, the chief operating officer, told securities analysts that the company expects the service to reach break-even sometime within the next few years.

Mr. Barksdale said the service had an average daily document volume of about 310 units in July, when it was introduced. It has fluctuated since then, he said, and rose to a high of 3,350 daily in December. January volume, however, has not grown at a strong rate, he said, since a promotional campaign has been discontinued. Given current costs, he said, the Zap Mail service would have to produce revenues of between $30 million and $35 million a quarter to break even.

Mr. Barksdale said Federal Express would be introducing soon a machine that frequent users of Zap Mail can install in their offices, giving them direct access to the system.

Years later, in 2011, every office has Zap Mail.  We call it a Fax Machine…and it’s technology is now all but passe, having been replaced by the Digital Technological of Electronic messaging, other wise known as e-mail.

So, you ask, where did e-mail come from?

Computer engineer, Ray Tomlinson invented internet based email in late 1971. Under ARPAnet several major innovations occurred: email (or electronic mail), the ability to send simple messages to another person across the network (1971). Ray Tomlinson worked as a computer engineer for Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), the company hired by the United States Defense Department to build the first Internet in 1968.

Ray Tomlinson was experimenting with a popular program he wrote called SNDMSG that the ARPANET programmers and researchers were using on the network computers (Digital PDP-10s) to leave messages for each other. SNDMSG was a “local” electronic message program. You could only leave messages on the computer that you were using for other persons using that computer to read. Tomlinson used a file transfer protocol that he was working on called CYPNET to adapt the SNDMSG program so it could send electronic messages to any computer on the ARPANET network.

The Fax Machine is just one casualty of Digital Technology.  Word came from nytimes.com yesterday that there’s about to be a bigger casualty…a much bigger casualty.

Businessinsider.com summarizes the Times’ report:

…unless the House and Senate take drastic action in the next few months, one of the nation’s oldest institutions — which employs 574,000 Americans — may be forced to shut down.

A combination of labor costs and a declining number of packages and letters has the United States Postal Service running short on cash. The independent government agency will be unable to make a $5.5 billion payment to its employee healthcare plan by the Sept. 30 due date.

“Our situation is extremely serious,” the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, told the Times. “If Congress doesn’t act, we will default.”

To avoid insolvency, Donahoe says needs Congress to approve the elimination of Saturday delivery and the undoing of the agency’s contract with its union to allow it to layoff up to 120,000 works. The Post Office is also planning to close 3,700 locations.

Ending Saturday delivery would only cut about two percent of the agency’s budget — and is vigorously opposed by many lawmakers from states with large rural populations. They would rather the agency recover the $60 billion it has overpaid into its employee pension plans and pursue less drastic restructuring.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the Post Office’s precarious financial position, though no politically palatable solution is in sight.

The United States Postal Service’s origin traces back to our country’s founding:

Following the adoption of the Constitution in May 1789, the Act of September 22, 1789 (1 Stat. 70), temporarily established a post office and created the Office of the Postmaster General. On September 26, 1789, George Washington appointed Samuel Osgood of Massachusetts as the first Postmaster General under the Constitution. At that time there were 75 post offices and about 2,000 miles of post roads, although as late as 1780 the postal staff consisted only of a Postmaster General, a Secretary/Comptroller, three surveyors, one Inspector of Dead Letters, and 26 post riders.

Now, facing the reality of being the Postmaster General presiding over the inevitable demise of an American institution, Donahue’s plan to stave off extinction is to cut $20 billion of the $75 billion in annual costs by 2015. To do that, he wants to close many post offices and slash the number of sorting facilities to 200 from 500 and trim the agency’s work force by 220,000 people, from its current 653,000. (A decade ago, the agency employed nearly 900,000.)

Faced with what postal officials have labeled “the equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy,” Donahue and his staff are asking Congress to enact legislation that would overturn the job protections and let it lay off 120,000 workers in addition to trimming 100,000 jobs through attrition.

Unfortunately for postal employees, that legislation, if passed, will only delay the inevitable. The government bureaucracy of the USPS will be replaced by private industry, just as love letters have been replaced by texting.

Perhaps Zager and Evans weren’t that far off, after all…