My Stamp Shop - The History Of Stamps
The first envelopes were made of cloth, animal skins, or vegetable parts. The Babylonians wrapped their message in thin sheets of clay that were then baked.
First Postal System
In 1653, Frenchman, De Valayer established a postal system in Paris. He set up mail boxes and delivered any letters placed in them if they used envelopes that only he sold. An enemy put live mice into the letter boxes and ruined De Valayer's business.
Before the use of adhesive paper stamps, letters were hand stamped or postmarked with ink. Postmarks were the invention of Henry Bishop and were at first called 'Bishop mark' after the inventor.
 Bishop Marks |
Bishop marks were first used in 1661 at the London General Post Office. They marked the day and month the letter was mailed. More..
Adhesive Postage Stamps
A schoolmaster from England, Rowland Hill invented the adhesive postage stamp in 1837, an act for which he was knighted.
 Sir Roland Hill |
Through his efforts the first stamps in the world was issued in England in 1840. On May 6, 1840, the "Penny Black" stamp was released and the "Twopenny Blue" shortly after on May 8th, 1840. The two stamps were engraved with the profile of Queen Victoria's head, who remained on all British stamps for the next sixty years.
 Penny Black |
 2 Penny Blue |
Roland Hill also created the first uniform postage rates that were based on weight rather than size. Hill's stamps made the prepayment of mail postage possible and practical.
The popularity of this new system of sending mail and collecting the fee in advance spread fast and it didn't take long for other countries to use similar systems. In 1847, the United States Post Office Department printed its first stamps, a 5-cent stamp picturing Benjamin Franklin and a 10-cent stamp picturing George Washington.
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These new stamps were also incorporated with counterfeit measures to make them more secure against counterfeiting and falsification. These counterfeit measures included watermarked paper upon which the stamps were printed and the picture on the stamps contained artifacts transferred from the printing press blocks along with letters in the bottom corners of the stamp. This pattern of letters did not repeat itself on a sheet of 240 printed stamps. More...
 Watermark |
The First Mail Order Catalog
Aaron Montgomery Ward sent out his first mail order catalog in 1872 - for his Montgomery Ward mail order business located at Clark and Kinzie Streets in Chicago. The first catalog consisted of a single sheet of paper with a price list, 8 by 12 inches, showing the merchandise for sale with ordering instructions.
Montgomery Ward gradually expanded the catalog. They became bigger, more heavily illustrated, chock full of goods-- often referred to as "dream books" by rural families.
The First Automatic Postal Sorter
Canadian electronics scientist, Doctor Maurice Levy invented an automatic postal sorter in 1957 that could handle 200,000 letters an hour.
The First Airmail
The first Airmail to fly in the world was flown in India in 1911. You can read the whole story HERE
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