How the US Postal Service reads terrible handwriting
Tom Scott4 HN recommenders · 2022–2026
7M views · documentary · evergreen · Uploaded 2022-08-08
Tom Scott visits the USPS Remote Encoding Center in Salt Lake City, where keyers decipher mail images machines cannot read. It shows the lengths taken to decode bad handwriting.
Recommended in address and OCR threads as a look at the last human mail-coding operation.
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8 comments from Hacker News
Actually, we're talking about both, and you are wrong on both counts. If you weren't, you would be able to point to an existing system that has demonstrated the capability of classifying an image set on the order of iCloud's, without producing a false-positive. You can't, because such a system doesn't exist. Even the "solved" problem of OCR isn't capable of such a feat: [VIDEO]
One of Don Rosa's books has the letters he sent to a friend in college, each with a drawing on the envelope and less and less address, until finally it was all drawing and barely part of a name - they all got (eventually) delivered. There's a specific branch of the post office that works on these - the dead letter office: [VIDEO]
[VIDEO] might be of interest - it has some of what the machines are trying to read and what accuracy they need.
This Tom Scott video shows some of the surprising (to me) lengths to which the USPS does go to figure out the right address: [VIDEO] Obviously this doesn't apply to your case, but I certainly didn't think they'd have a national center for decoding terrible handwriting.
Tom Scott did a great video showing the last one in operation. They use totally unique keyboards with what is essentially a stenography system: [VIDEO]
And like almost all things that are interesting, here's a Ton Scott video about the same topic: [VIDEO]
> Though USPS has been doing handwriting recognition since the 80's. On a very restricted dictionary of possible content, with a pool of people employed to fix anything where the computer is unsure. [VIDEO]
As a profession (and under time constraints) ... Tom Scott : How the US Postal Service reads terrible handwriting - [VIDEO] Part of the story is that the OCR that is handling hand lettered addresses. I also chuckled at the cursive letter recognition sheet on the side of the cube.