Its part of a single Machine I was told. The machine in question is in the Mail Order processing room. The Date stamp and Onaka’s stamp is done at the same time by that machine. The date can be changed, but it is not something that can be easily done on accident. So I was told.
More credence to a system wide computer glitch.
If your short form COLB comes back with “File” instead of “Accepted,” get on that phone asking Hawaii for an explanation because it doesn’t jive with your long form COLB.
Once upon a time I worked at a company that had an office that processed large volumes of incoming mail. The office had about a dozen electric time stamping machines. When you passed a document under a machine, it would trigger a microswitch, and the stamper would advance the ribbon slightly and impress a stamp on the document, giving the current date and time, to the minute.
Once every minute, a stamper machine would advance to the next minute. This was a mechanical operation and gave off a solid ker-chunk sound.
Of course, the machines were all started at different times, so the minute turn-over for each machine would be different. That meant that, every five seconds or so, one of the dozen machines around the office would sound off with a ker-chunk.
cynwoody saw an opportunity for process improvement and workplace optimization. So, one evening after hours, a friend and I visited that office and careully synchronized the date stampers to all turn over at the exact top of the minute with one massive KER-CHUNK!
We made sure the date/time was synchronized to WWV. Not that it mattered. It wasn't Vital Records or anything important.