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“A bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp and covered at the back with a glutinous wash which the user might, by applying a little moisture, attach to the back of the letter.” That was it— the first ment Today, stamps are such an everyday experience for us that we do not

Postal abuse in Great Britain continued to get worse. As might be expected, the post office became an unprofitable and inefficient enterprise. Complaints mounted on all sides— from merchants, clergy and government. Finally, in 1837, a forty-two-year-old ex-schoolteacher and government bureaucrat named Rowland Hill published a pamphlet entitled Post Office Reform, Its Importance and Practibility. Hill’s pamphlet

The practice of defrauding the post office in the pre-stamp period was extensive. To combat this, proposals were made by postal officials to demand prepayment of postage. But because charges were so high and service was so poor, the public felt that the postman would only make an earnest effort to deliver a letter if

In 1835, Great Britain was the world leader in commerce. Its empire was truly impressive, with colonies spanning the globe, including Canada, India, and Australia. At its zenith, Great Britain controlled nearly 25 percent of the earth’s land surface. Communication by mail was imperative to the administration of its empire.   The British Post Office

By the end of the fifteenth and early into the sixteenth century, a courier service that spanned a continent was developing from what had been originally a simple family business. The Taxis family first began their postal routes with a contract to provide service between Crown Prince Philip in France and his father Emperor Maximilian

Keep in mind that the public posts first developed in the Renaissance were not the first posts in history. Many empires existed before 1300, and whenever an empire arose, the communication system to administer that empire had to be created along with it. The provincial governor of a colony needed to know what taxes were

Confederate States philately has always enjoyed enormous popularity. The stamps are interestingly printed, served a real postal purpose, and the story behind the stamps has real philatelic appeal – large nation, rent by discord, one section withdraws from union to preserve the ability to own human beings as property, the other side fights to retain

The post was the major medium of communication from the advent of paper until the invention of the telephone. And even today, when there are probably more modes of communication than there is information worth relating, the post remains our chief method. Billions of letters, packages, and magazines are carried annually. The ease with which