Postman’s Nightmare (1960)

M/S of two postmen and the post office sorting machine, ’ELSIE’ (Electronic Letter Sorting Indicator Equipment) in Borough, London. The man seated at the machine is Mr Davis (sp? could be Avis), the operator. The other man, Mr Whitehead, is sorting letters by hand on a trolley; he then carries a batch over to the machine and puts them on it. C/U of the letters then panning shot to show them being carried up by the machine and fed into it. C/U over the operator’s shoulder as the letters are fed down into a viewing screen. He is pressing buttons on a keyboard as the letters go through. M/S of the ’memory wheels’ of the machine slowly turning; a man comes into the shot to adjust one of them. Various M/Ss and C/Us of different parts of the machine and the letters speeding through, along conveyor belts and into pigeonholes where a man takes a pile of them out of the box marked Edinburgh. M/S as he walks to a table, ties them with string and places them in another box. The commentator says “Despite