During the Second World War, the UK partnered with the Eastman Kodak company to create something called the British Airgraph Service. Instead of transporting letters from England to fighters abroad, the Airgraph Service took pictures of the letters and stored large sets of them on one reel of film. The letters were then brought to where the soldiers were stationed, printed, and distributed. When America entered the war, they adopted a similar system and operationalized it across post offices throughout the country and to soldiers. Per the World War II Museum, V-Mail used “a standardized stationery which combined the letter and envelope into one piece of paper” that was “specially designed by the Government Printing Office and was provided free of charge by the Post Office at the rate of two sheets per person per day.”
Instead of mailing the V-mail letters, consumers brought them to their post office to be scanned by machine and recorded onto film. The film was then flown to Europe or back home; each letter was then printed and distributed as if it were the original letter. The solution saved a huge amount of space; the United States Postal Service explained that “roughly 1,600 letters would fit on one roll, reducing them to approximately three percent of their original weight and volume. For example, 150,000 unmicrofilmed V-Mail letters weighed 1,500 pounds and filled 22 mail sacks. When microfilmed, they weighed 45 pounds and filled one mail sack — a great space saver on crowded transports.”
