Re: CHAT: postcodes

Roger Mills wrote:

> IIRC-- back in the olden days, before postal codes were thought to be
> necessary, 75 was the Paris prefix on automobile license plates.  Did they
> just adapt that system to the mails? Quite logical, if so.
Quite right.  My girlfriend's mother once found a collection of
small calenders in a house she was renting - some of them quite old
- and in the back of one of them there was a table of French license
plates codes.  I forget how old it was but to give you an idea, it
listed Algeria as part of France. :)  I forget what its code was.

Here, it's quite common to see _just_ the Departmental code when
referring to a place.  I might, for example, sign an e-mail "Eamon
Graham (49)" meaning I'm Eamon Graham and living in Maine-et-Loire.

Departmental codes are two digits with the following exceptions:
Corsica is divided into 2A and 2B and overseas departments are three
digits beginning with 97: Guadeloupe is 971.

License tags are formatted thusly: NNNN XX DD where NNNN = a four
digit number (I've seen more, but outside my window right now I just
see 4 digits) XX = two letters and DD = the departmental code.  I
don't know - maybe someone can confirm or deny this for me, I don't
own a car - but the XX seems to have something to do with the
location as well.  I've noticed that here in Maine-et-Loire a lot of
license tags have two letter codes beginning with the higher letters
of the alphabet; XY 49 is very common at the end of license tags
here in Angers.

Cheers,
Eamon

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