Sorry to say, the current machine cancel identifier may not work with all cancellations earlier than 1900 or those dated later than 1920.
You can learn a lot about earlier machine cancels from William Barlow's Award-Winning Boston Machine Cancel Exhibit. It is well worth studying each page of this remarkable exhibit, to see how machines of various brands were installed in Boston over the years. Several rare or one-of-a-kind machines are shown.
Anyway, don't give up, you may still find your machine on a page showing the combinations of various machine cancel dials and killers. Or, check out a web page showing lots of images of various U. S. machine cancellations. [NOTE: lots of pictures on the page]. If you want to learn more about machine cancellations applied to mail, check out the Machine Cancel Society.
Start Over with Machine Cancel Finder!
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Updated March 4, 2019
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