First Class Service

At a whopping 35 feet long, the Lockheed Martin OCR/BCR handles 20,000 pieces of mail per hour, verifying pre-addressed information and spraying on bar codes before mailing.

"It has a database of every address in America—125 million addresses—on CD-ROM," Davis reports. "We also use Fast Forward software from the USPS for address changes. For example, if someone moves and turns in a change-of-address card, the machine knows this and sprays on the new bar code with the new address."