During WWII, soldiers sent "V-mail" ("victory mail") home in the form of letters that were opened, photographed onto microfilm, flown to the US and printed out, re-addressed and delivered. This saved tons in freight expenses and it was delivered by speedy airmail, while regular letters went by slow sea-freight.
The BBC has photos of period v-mails along with audio of soldiers reminiscing about their v-mail adventures.
[T]he soldiers wrote their letters on a form provided and it was then photographed onto microfilm which was simply flown to the USA. A reel of 16mm microfilm could contain 18,000 letters and in terms of bulk and weight the roll of film took up only a fraction of what 18,000 real letters would take. Upon arrival in the USA the letters were printed from the film and then posted onward to the addressee.
This clever method was employed at the suggestion of the US Army Postal Director Col. Bill Rose who actually copied the idea from a system then currently in operation in the British services which was called an 'airgraph'.
The process might seem to be laborious with the collection of mail, the actual photographing of thousands and thousands of letters and a similar process at the other end of re-printing the photographs, addressing envelopes and mailing them on. It did really all boil down to a space issue and it is on record that for every 150,000 letters microfilmed like this over a ton of shipping space was saved.
(via Neatorama)
