PROPOSALS FOR MAIL LOCKS.
POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON. D. C., October 23, 1880.
SEALED PROPOSALS will be received at this Department, until 12 o'clock, noon, on the 26th day of January, 1881, for furnishing a new kind of mail locks and keys for the sole and exclusive use of the United States through registered mails.
As the public exposure and searching examination necessary to intelligent bidding on any prescribed model of a lock and key would tend to impair, if not entirely destroy, the further utility of such locks and keys for the purposes of the mails, the Postmaster General prescribes no model or sample for bidders, but relies for a selection on the mechanical skill and ingenuity which a fair competition among inventors, hereby invited, may develop in samples submitted by them.
Specifications of the conditions and requirements relating to proposals, samples, contract, etc., as well as forms of proposal, will be furnished on application by letter to the Second Assistant Postmaster General.
No proposal will be considered unless it shall have been submitted in accordance with such specification and forms.
The contracts which may be made will be in conformity to the specifications and the accepted proposal. But the right is, however, reserved to reject any and all of the proposals.
JAS. N. TYNER,
Acting Postmaster General.