It's interesting how stories, such as the mail slot story, even
when originally told as legend or even conjecture, attain the
credibility of fact, if repeated long enough.  To the best of my
recalling (not having the information before me), the mail slot
version of the origin of the name QRS was always presented as a theory,
albeit a persistent one.  If one thinks about it, it starts of pretty
plausibly: orders were placed in the seldom-used Q mail slot which
then overflowed into the R and eventually S slots, thus becoming
"QRS" orders.

The problem with this is that, while Q might not be so frequently
used, R and S most likely were heavily used, and, if a mail clerk
was looking for unused places in the mailroom to put the orders
overflowing from the Q slot, I suspect he'd have had to look some
place other than the adjacent slots.

The story I posted, as one subscriber already mentioned, seems
authentic, especially since it places the origin on a specific
individual, Melville Clark's patent attorney.  The entire article is
quite interesting, actually, and well worth looking up on the MBSI's
site (search "Melville Clark" and its from Presto-Monthly of November
1931).

Among other interesting things I learned from this article was that
it was Melville Clark's brother, Ernest Clark, who did the lion's share
of the work in the roll manufacturing end of the business, including
developing the machinery to produce rolls, and that, with one
exception, the entire leadership of the firm changed after the merger
with DeVry.

I'm very curious to trace the origins of the mail slot story, as well
as the other theories as to the naming of QRS.  Anyone know more about
this?

Bryan Cather, St. Louis