Mailomat

Walter Bowes is 56, Walter H. Wheeler Jr., 42. Walter Bowes is nervous, restless; he hates a desk and office hours, prefers to putter about his home. Walter Wheeler is the reverse, has steady nerves and a passion for detail, likes to organize. One thing this antipodal pair have in common is a love of sailing. In 1929 Yachtsman Bowes sailed his six-meter Saleema to an international championship. In 1938 Yachtsman Wheeler won the Astor cup with his Q class Cottonblossom II. Messrs. Bowes and Wheeler have still another thing in common, their business--Pitney-Bowes Postage Meter Co. of Stamford, Conn. Chairman Bowes invents the meters and President Wheeler sells them. Last week they presented their slickest postage meter to date, the "Mailomat."

Unveiled in Manhattan's General Post Office, the Mailomat is about the size of a telephone booth, performs a similar service. You put your money in one slot, your letter in another, push a lever and the letter is automatically stamped and posted. Advantages are sanitation (no licking) and speed (no waiting at a post office window, no need for the letter to be canceled).

The Mailomat, whose price to the Government, or rental to industry, is still unfixed, is a development of the postage meter Walter Bowes persuaded the Post Office to try in 1920, year after he and the late Arthur Pitney formed Pitney-Bowes. Since then use of postage meters has risen until they now provide the U. S. Government with 16% of its annual postage revenue. Practically every big U. S. company has either rented or bought a Pitney-Bowes machine to speed up its mailing. Pitney-Bowes profits meanwhile have risen to $614,791 in 1937, $586,416 last year. Its stock, traded on the Curb, was only at $7.25 last week, but Founder Bowes has enough so that the annual 50-c--per-share dividend enables him to indulge another expensive hobby besides yachting--a stud farm in Virginia.

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