— Exceedingly Rare Eberhard Faber International Letter Scale. Price $2,450.

First scale to work based on a parallelogram with a pointer or hand attached thereto and placed radially on the graduated arc or scale or dial; the functioning principle of which hundreds of thousands of small scales were built thereafter. Eberhard-Faber-International-letter-scale-Albracht-Horn-patent
But that is not all, there is more!
This scale also did away with tables used to look up the price for a certain weight of a letter or other mail, whether it was mailed domestic or international.
It does not sound very smart to design a postal scale with the tariffs for different weights of a letter printed on the enamel face or dial of the scale. But this is just one of the inventions protected under the patent issued to Maurits J. Albracht back in 1881.
Unlike today when the price of a letter seems to change every year, back in the 19th and early 20st century, that was not the case. The price seemed to be a thing immutable as cut in stone, never to change.
For the next 38 years, this notion seemed to hold as the postage did actually never change; the postage for a letter up to half an ounce was two cents, and up to one ounce four cents.
However, in 1917, the rates changed and the price for a letter increased from two cents to three cents. That was not the only change and these scales became obsolete, hence its rarity!
This beautiful, back in 1881 ground breaking scale, stands 14-1/2 inches tall and is the first one to use a parallelogram with adjustable arm pointing to the radially graduated arc or dial to indicate the weight. It does not get any better than this! Hundreds of thousands of letter scales were eventually built on this idea or principal, read more>>


Posted on 02 Feb 2023, 18:55 - Category: Office, Banking
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