Really? Playboy had this, also; the Rabbit logo was the only address and it was delivered correctly.
Traditionally, post offices take pride in correctly delivering obscurely-addressed mail. This tumblr account documents one person’s attempt to test the capacity of the Irish post office in this respect. The post office generally performs well, correctly delivering:
[ul]
a letter addressed only to “man in Waterford who looks like a bit of a rapist”[/ul]
[ul]a letter addressed to “Ya know yer wan, her mother’s Hogan from Castleblayney, but the daughter’s an ex-townie. Grew up on Athlone and moved to Balllymacward when she got married. Lives next door to her in-laws now. She has a rake a’ childer and 7 dogs and 4 cats and about 30 hens + ducks and some rabbits an fish and I think she has a hamster as well. She has a shrine to the Virgin Mary in the left corner of her garden. Can you give her this please? Thanks xxx”
[/ul]
[ul]a letter in which the address was covered by a rotating encoding disc, which had to be rotated in a stated sequence in order to reveal the address, letter by letter. [/ul]
[ul] a letter addressed only with a hand-drawn map of the county, with the destination marked with an arrow and the words “here please”[/ul]
[ul] A letter addressed to a train driver, identified only by the number of his locomotive.[/ul]
[ul] A letter addressed to the ringmaster of a travelling circus, with no location given.[/ul][ul] A letter in which all numbers had been stripped from the address - street numbers and postcode - and the postman had to solve a sodoku puzzle to identify the missing numbers.[/ul]
Some people clearly have a lot of time on their hands.
seal cleaner:
“Where is he sending this telegram from?”
“I’m not certain, but I have a hunch…”
Hehe.
No kidding. :dubious: Those types probably spend a lot of time on message boards. 
:smack:
1951 wants their joke back…
Famously by Estee Lauder, who attributed her success to word-of-mouth marketing.
I’ve been trying to find the names of some California Hotels that had telegraph offices, but without success. All I’ve found about America so far is
IIRC, Mad copied the idea after Playboy did it to prove that they were just as famous.
Make that 1951
Is this the kind of information you are looking for: The Official Hotel Red Book and Directory (1920 edition). It appears that by this date it was standard for most hotels (denoted in the book with the symbol †) to have a telegraph office, even in small towns.
Oh my – I LOVE that! Thank you so much for that link!
I don’t believe so. I read that issue of Mad when it first came out. As I recall Mad’s editorial answer was along the line of a challenge to Playboy so I think a Playboy reader responded.
I also read the issue when it first came out, and as I recall the Mad editor said that there had been some suspicion that the Playboy delivery wasn’t authentic, while theirs was proven to have actually occurred. The Playboy delivery happened in 1959. I can’t find a definite date for the Mad event but references say “in the 1960s.” I believe I started reading Mad when I was 10, which would have been in 1961.
Many organisations had a telegraphic address; the Metropolitan Police had HANDCUFFS, LONDON. I observe from an old catalogue RIFLEMEN, BIRMINGHAM for the Parker-Hale company selling gun and shooting requisites.
I love “HANDCUFFS, LONDON”!
Well, I messed up that reply. On further review, the † symbol indicates communities, not hotels, with telegraph offices.
However, I was able to find a few references at the California Digital Newspaper Collection site. At this time the two main U.S. telegraph companies were Western Union and Postal Telegraph (which, despite its similar name, was a private company unrelated to the U.S. Postal Service): Hotel La Vista Grande, Monrovia, 1903, Tremont Hotel, Red Bluff, 1904, Clarendon Hotel, Los Angeles, 1875 where “The Western Union Telegraph Offices communicate with the Reading Room”, Blackman House, Los Angeles, 1875 (which became the Grand Central Hotel), and another Grand Central Hotel, Tabor City, 1875.
A couple more interesting documents: International Cable Directory of the World in conjunction with Western Union Telegraphic Code System (1905 edition), and the Western Union Travelers’ Cable Code.
I think addresses generally did not necessarily need much complexity in the olden days, as few people corresponded, and low local populations meant that officials often knew each individual who was being addressed. This was the case where I grew up. We did not have an address, other than the town where we lived. We were the only people with our last name. I could get a letter at “Napier, Napierville” or “Napier, Napierville, Napierstate” depending on the distance from which it was sent. When when Zip Codes came out, I could get a letter at “Napier, 12345” from anywhere in the US.
To give directions to our house, we would state the name of our road, and where along the road our driveway was, in terms of landmarks or the closest intersections. But our road name was also not that established, and appeared as “Creek Road” or “Suchandsuch Creek Road” in various contexts such as road signs, maps, and official documents. We did not have a mailbox on the road, but rather went to the post office to pick it up, and there were no address numbers along that road.
All this has changed. They redefined town boundaries, so our old home appears to have moved to a different town several miles away. The Zip code changed. And our long driveway, which had 3 then 4 then 5 houses along it, has since been redesignated a named road with address numbers along it. Other than the state, there would be nothing to link the old and new addresses.
Addresses, I think, used to be much less formal, and might be thought of more as instructions for reaching somebody than as a formatted protocol such as might be filled in in a form online.
This is so cool. The last column gives the cable address. 
At the top of those pages, it says,
*Mark Transatlantic Cablegrams for United States, Canada, Cuba, West Indies, Mexico and beyond "Via Western Union, "Via Anglo, or “Via Direct.” *
Anyone care to suss out exactly what the difference is among those? What do you suppose qualified as “beyond” back then?
“Anglo” is AAT, Anglo American Telegraph. Laid the second England-America cable, after the first one failed. Wound up in 1968 after they lost the Western Union contract.
That suggests to me that “direct” “western union” and “anglo” all meant the same thing, and that there must have also been some indirect route that didn’t use an AAT transatlantic cable.
Amusingly, I think exactly the same thing could be said of email addresses.
Thanks.
You people are so danged smart.