Love Letters
“Mrs. Minnie Peres, left, and Miss Carol Baltazore accept mail from and place mail for delivery with Malachi, one of six robot mail delivery units in use in offices in Chicago’s Sears Tower on Tuesday, Oct. 4, 1977.” Image and caption by AP Photo/Charles Kelly
Recently, sleek machines parading as waiters have been spotted in high tech restaurants. But before robots delivered food, they delivered mail. Recall the valiant “Mailmobile,” a 700-pound mail cart that trapsed around 1970s offices at 100 inches per second, a little slower than human walking speed. In this picture, Malachi the robot accepts outgoing mail in Chicago’s Sears Tower (later renamed Willis Tower) on October 4, 1977. Lear Siegler, Inc, developed the product between its typical aerospace contracts with the US military. With blinking baby blue lights, Mailmobile charmed its way across the US. By the end of its production lifetime, over 4,000 robots had glided into corporate offices.
Mailmobile needed no remote control or clumsy track grid. Lear Siegler developed a fluorescent chemical that could be sprayed on the carpet to lead the robot wherever managers needed it to go. The trail was nearly invisible to human coworkers, illuminated only by a black light sensor under the robot itself.
Office coworkers usually had affectionate names for their sometimes-clumsy friend, like R2-D2, Godzilla, Happy Honker, Rug Runner, or Old Blue Eyes. Malachi’s office in Chicago was chided for overdressing robots, and soon only name placards and tasteful touches like Mickey Mouse faces were allowed. Such intense affection even caught on among 21st century audiences of FX’s The Americans, a TV show based in Cold War Washington that accidentally starred an endearing Mailmobile.
The trusty colleague lasted four decades and three company mergers but fell victim to the eradication of mail itself. Its final manufacturer, Dematic, stopped production in 2016 when most offices used electronic inboxes instead of a mailroom. This decade has yet to see if streamlined robotic waitresses can enamor customers the way secretaries fell headlong for the chunky, honky mailman.
