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Pitney Bowes

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Driving commerce forward for more than 95 years.

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“Welcome to the World of Pitney Bowes”

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Narrator:

In the connected, borderless, and everchanging world of commerce today, complexity is a constant, data abounds. Error-free is the expectation. And physical and digital transactions work in concert to create real business impact. As this world of commerce has evolved, Pitney Bowes has evolved too. Today, we’re a global technology company powering billions of digital and physical transactions for more than 1.5 million small businesses, and for 95% of Fortune 500. How did we get from there to here? By understanding the value in getting every transaction exactly right. In everything we do, we’re driven to deliver accuracy and precision to help our clients create meaningful impact, identifying patterns within a client’s data to help them target customers in the best way possible, providing the most comprehensive and accurate location data so our clients can make smarter business decisions, helping clients deliver the right messages, through the right channels, at the right time, making sure the right bank statement, invoice, or credit card bill ends up in the right envelope and the right mailbox, millions of times a day, and studying every detail of customs processes around the world so sending a parcel from Los Angeles to Lisbon comes with accurate costs and no surprises.

Welcome to the connected and borderless world of commerce where getting it precisely right creates an exponential impact that moves business forward.

Welcome to the world of Piney Bowes.

At Pitney Bowes we deliver innovations that help clients navigate the complex and always evolving world of commerce–from helping them use data to market to the best customers, to efficiently enabling the sending of parcels and packages, to securing payments through statements and invoices. In everything we do, we deliver accuracy and precision to drive meaningful impact.

A postage meter machine

1920: The birth of an industry. Arthur Pitney, the inventor of the first commercially available postage meter, joins forces with Walter Bowes to form Pitney Bowes—and changed the way companies of all sizes do business.

Pitney Bowes logo with large P and B letters

1930: Stamp of product security. The first Pitney Bowes logo symbolizes the security of the metered mail system, serving as a mark of product excellence and pledge of postal service.

Two workers with a desktop mail meter machine

1949: A desktop mail station. The first mass-market meter designed to sit on a desk launches.

A mail metering machine

1950: “Make the mailer’s life easier.” The brand power of the name Pitney Bowes is built through sales, service and advertising in national magazines. The theme is constant: “Metered mail makes the mailer's life easier.”

Four men looking at a mail sorting machine.

1957: Keeping pace with business transactions. Pitney Bowes introduces the first automatic mail-sorting machine.

Three men working with a mail inserter machine.

1961: Increasing productivity for high-volume clients. Pitney Bowes creates the mail inserter to boost productivity, drive precision and decrease costs in large volume mailing.

Handheld barcode reading devise

1968: Bar codes for retail. Pitney Bowes produces the first bar code equipment for retail use.

New Pitney Bowes logo resempling a + sign

1971: Crossroads of communication. Pitney Bowes adopts a new logo, symbolizing the intersection of paper-based and electronic communication.

A man working with a Postage by Phone machine

1978: Transferring funds electronically. Postage by Phone® is introduced by Pitney Bowes, eliminating the need for businesses to make trips to the post office.

A man working with a FAX machine

1986: Moving beyond mail. Fax machines and scales with microprocessors are added to the Pitney Bowes product line.

A Paragon postage machine

1992: Integrated processing. A new age of integrated mail processing begins with the launch of the Paragon® system, which automatically calculates and affixes postage based on weight and size.

A desktop computer

1996: Empowering small businesses to grow. Line of credit for postage allows clients to “mail now and pay later” for postage—ultimately improving their cash flow.

man at a keyboard staring into a computer screen.

1998: Digital document delivery. The launch of D3 software enables message management via hard copy, web, email and fax.

A GPS devise

2007: Location. Location. Location. MapInfo, a provider of location intelligence solutions, is acquired by Pitney Bowes in order to solidify its offering in the software space.

Software magazine cover

2009: Growing in software. Pitney Bowes expands its software footprint through a variety of software acquisitions including Group 1 Software and gains recognition as one of the world’s largest software companies, according to Software Magazine.

Graphic of a globe

2012: Going global. Pitney Bowes simplifies the complexity of overseas shipping for ecommerce clients.

Someone's hand holding a smartphone

2014: Social gets smarter. Major social media platforms use Pitney Bowes Location Intelligence technology to enable more contextually relevant experiences.

Pitney Bowes logo

2015: Rippling impact. Pitney Bowes launches a new brand, expressing how the company delivers accuracy and precision across the connected and borderless world of commerce to help clients create meaningful impact.

The Founders and History of The Model M Postage Meter

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Arthur H. Pitney

Arthur Pitney created his first mailing system in 1901 while working as a wallpaper store clerk. His first postage machine consisted of a manual crank, chain action, printing die, counter, and lockout device. After being granted a patent in 1902, he shortly after formed the Pitney Postal Machine Company in Chicago, Illinois. This became the American Postage Meter Company in 1912.

 
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Walter Bowes

Walter Bowes headed the Universal Stamping Machine Company during the early 20th century, which manufactured post office canceling machines. He achieved prominence during this time for promoting the permit printing of mail, and eventually moved his operation to Stamford, Connecticut in 1917.

 

By 1920, Pitney and Bowes met in Stamford and formed the Pitney Bowes Postage Meter Company, which focused on developing and promoting the postage meter. Later that year, the company built an improved version of the postage meter that separated the registering mechanism from the printing die. This version, known as The Model M Postage Meter, was authorized by the Post Office on September 1, 1920, and put into commercial use later that year.

Drawing of the Model M postage meter
Drawing of the Model M postage meter

SOURCE

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Pitney Bowes Model M Postage Meter, 1920,
An International Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark, September 1986
.
asme.org/getmedia/960c9491-5a74-44db-b8ca-eac8d95985ba/114-Pitney-Bowes-Model-M-Postage-Meter.aspx
(Accessed August 9, 2016)

America’s Mailing Industry