The History Of Postage Stamp

A postage stamp is a small piece of paper that is purchased and displayed on an item of mail as evidence of payment of postage. Typically, stamps are made from special paper, with a national designation and denomination (price) on the face, and a gum adhesive on the reverse side. Postage stamps are purchased from a postal administration or other authorized vendor and are used to pay for the costs involved in moving mail as well as other business necessities such as insurance and registration.

The stamp’s shape is usually that of a small rectangle of varying proportions, though triangles or other shapes are occasionally used. The stamp is affixed to an envelope or other postal cover (i.e., packet, box, mailing cylinder) that the customer wishes to send. The item is then processed by the postal system, where a postmark, sometimes known as a cancellation mark, is usually applied over the stamp and cover; this procedure marks the stamp as used, which prevents its reuse. The postmark indicates the date and point of origin of the mailing. The mailed item is then delivered to the address that the customer has applied to the envelope or cover.

Postage stamps have facilitated the delivery of mail since the 1840s. Before this time, ink and hand-stamps (hence the word 'stamp'), usually made from wood or cork, were often used to frank the mail and confirm the payment of postage. The first adhesive postage stamp, commonly referred to as the Penny Black, was issued in the United Kingdom in 1840. The invention of the stamp was a part of the attempt to reform and improve the postal system in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which in the early 19th century was in disarray and rife with corruption.There are varying accounts of the inventor or inventors of the stamp.

Before the introduction of postage stamps, mail in the UK was paid for by the recipient, a system that was associated with an irresolvable problem: the costs of delivering mail were not recoverable by the postal service when recipients were unable or unwilling to pay for delivered items, and senders had no incentive to restrict the number, size, or weight of items sent, whether or not they would ultimately be paid for. The postage stamp resolved this issue in a simple and elegant manner, with the additional benefit of room for an element of beauty to be introduced. Later related inventions include postal stationery such as prepaid-postage envelopes, post cards, lettercards, aerogrammes and wrappers, postage meters, and, more recently, specialty boxes and envelopes provided free to the customer by the U.S. postal service for priority or express mailing.

The postage stamp afforded convenience for both the mailer and postal officials, more efficiently recovered costs for the postal service, and ultimately resulted in a better, faster postal system. With the conveniences stamps offered, their use resulted in greatly increased mailings during the 19th and 20th centuries. Postage stamps during this era were the most popular way of paying for mail, but by the end of the 20th century were rapidly being eclipsed by the use of metered postage and bulk mailing by businesses. The same result with respect to communications by private parties occurred over the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st due to declining cost of long distance telephone communications and the development and explosive spread of electronic mailing ("e-mail" via the Internet) and bill paying systems had.

As postage stamps with their engraved imagery began to appear on a widespread basis, historians and collectors began to take notice The study of postage stamps and their use is referred to as philately. Stamp collecting can be both a hobby and a form of historical study and reference, as government-issued postage stamps and their mailing systems have always been involved with the history of nations.

Invention

 Throughout modern history various innovations were used to apply or indicate that postage has been paid on a mailed item and as such the invention of the postage stamp has been credited to several different people.

William Dockwra

In 1680 William Dockwra, an English merchant in London, and his partner Robert Murray established the London Penny Post, a mail system that delivered letters and small parcels inside the city of London for the sum of one penny. The postage for the mailed item was prepaid by the use of a hand-stamp to frank the mailed item, confirming payment of postage. Though this 'stamp' was applied to a letter instead of a separate piece of paper it is considered by many historians as the world's first postage stamp.

Lovrenc Košir

In 1835 the Austro-Hungarian subject Lovrenc Košir, who was of Slovenian nationality, suggested the use of "artificially affixed postal tax stamps" using "gepresste papieroblate" which translates as "pressed paper wafers" but although the suggestion was looked at in detail, it was not adopted.

Rowland Hill

The Englishman Sir Rowland Hill started to take an interest in postal reform in 1835. In 1836, a Member of Parliament, Robert Wallace, provided Hill with numerous books and documents, which Hill described as a "half hundred weight of material". Hill commenced a detailed study of these documents, which led him to the publication, in early 1837, of a pamphlet entitled "Post Office Reform its Importance and Practicability". He submitted a copy of this to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Thomas Spring-Rice, on 4 January 1837. This first edition was marked "private and confidential" and was not released to the general public. The Chancellor summoned Hill to a meeting during which the Chancellor suggested improvements and changes to be presented in a supplement, which Hill duly produced and supplied on 28 January 1837.

Rowland Hill then received a summons to give evidence before the Commission for Post Office Enquiry on 13 February 1837. During his evidence, he read from the letter he had written to the Chancellor, which included the statement that a notation of paid postage could be created "…by using a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, and covered at the back with a glutinous wash…". This is the first publication of an unambiguous description of a modern adhesive postage stamp (though the term "postage stamp" did not yet exist at that time). Shortly afterward, the second edition of Hill’s booklet, dated 22 February 1837, was published, and made available to the general public. This booklet, containing some 28,000 words, incorporated the supplement he gave to the Chancellor and the statements he made to the Commission.

Hansard records that on 15 December 1837, Benjamin Hawes asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer "whether it was the intention of the Government to give effect to the recommendation of the Commissioners of the Post-office, contained in their ninth report relating to the reduction of the rates of postage, and the issuing of penny stamps?"

Hill’s ideas for postage stamps and charging postage based upon weight soon took hold and were adopted in many countries throughout the world. With the new policy of charging by weight, using envelopes for mailing documents became the norm. Hill’s brother Edwin Hill invented a prototype envelope-making machine that folded paper into envelopes quickly enough to match the pace of the growing demand for postage stamps.

Rowland Hill and the postal reforms he introduced to the UK postal system are commemorated on several postage issues of the United Kingdom.

James Chalmers

The claim that the Scotsman James Chalmers was the inventor of the postage stamp first surfaced in 1881 when the book "The Penny Postage Scheme of 1837", written by his son, Patrick Chalmers, was published. In this book, the son claims that James Chalmers first produced an essay describing and advocating a stamp in August 1834. However, no evidence for this is provided in the book. Patrick Chalmers continued to campaign until he died in 1891 to have his father recognised as the inventor of the postage stamp.

The first independent evidence for Chalmers' claim is the essay and proposal he submitted for adhesive postage stamps to the General Post Office, dated 8 February 1838 and received by the Post Office on 17 February 1838. In this approximately 800-word document about methods of franking letters he states, "Therefore, of Mr Hill’s plan of a uniform rate of postage … I conceive that the most simple and economical mode … would be by Slips … in the hope that Mr Hill’s plan may soon be carried into operation I would suggest that sheets of Stamped Slips should be prepared … then be rubbed over on the back with a strong solution of gum …". Chalmers' original document is now in the UK's National Postal Museum.

As the postage amounts stated in James Chalmers' essay mirrored those that were proposed by Rowland Hill in February 1837, it is clear that Chalmers was aware of Hill’s proposals. It is unknown whether he had obtained a copy of Hill’s booklet or if he had simply read about it in The Times newspaper, which had, on two occasions, on 25 March 1837 and on 20 December 1837, reported in great detail Hill’s proposals. However, in neither article was there any mention of "a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp", so merely reading the Times would not have made Chalmers aware that Hill had already made that proposal; this suggests either that he had read Hill's booklet and was merely elaborating on Hill's idea, or that he in fact independently developed the idea of the modern postage stamp.

James Chalmers organized petitions "for a low and uniform rate of postage". The first such petition was presented in the House of Commons on 4 December 1837 (from Montrose). Further petitions organised by him were presented on 1 May 1838 (from Dunbar and Cupar), 14 May 1838 (from the county of Forfar) and 12 June 1839. Many other people were concurrently organizing petitions and presenting them to Parliament. All these petitions were presented after Hill’s proposals had been published.

History

 Although a number of people laid claim to the concept of the postage stamp, it is well documented that stamps were first introduced in the United Kingdom on 1 May 1840, as a part of postal reforms promoted by Sir Rowland Hill. With its introduction, the postage fee was now to be paid by the sender and not the recipient, though it was still possible to send mail without prepaying. Postmarks have been applied over stamps since the first postage stamps came into use.

The first stamp, the penny black, was put on sale on 1 May, to be valid as of 6 May 1840; two days later the two pence blue was introduced. Both show an engraving of the young Queen Victoria, with smooth, unperforated edges. At the time, there was no reason to include the United Kingdom’s name on the stamp; the UK remains the only country not to identify itself by name on postal stamps, as it simply uses the current monarch’s head as implicit identification. Following the introduction of the postage stamp in the UK, the number of letters increased dramatically as the use of the stamp rapidly accelerated. Before 1839 the number of letters sent was 76 million. By 1850 this had increased fivefold to 350 million and continued to grow rapidly thereafter, until the end of the 20th century when newer methods drastically reduced the use of delivery systems requiring stamps.

Other countries soon followed with their own stamps. The Canton of Zürich in Switzerland issued the Zurich 4 and 6 rappen on 1 March 1843. Although the Penny Black could be used to send a letter less than half an ounce anywhere within the United Kingdom, the Swiss did not initially adopt that system, instead continuing to calculate mail rates based on distance to be delivered. Brazil issued the Bull’s Eye stamp on 1 August 1843. Using the same printer as for the Penny Black, Brazil opted for an abstract design instead of a portrait of Emperor Pedro II, so that his image would be not be disfigured by a postmark. In 1845 some postmasters in the United States issued their own stamps, but it was not until 1847 that the first official U.S. stamps were created, 5 and 10 cent issues depicting Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. A few other countries issued stamps in the late 1840s. Many others, such as India, initiated their use in the 1850s, and by the 1860s most countries had stamps.

Perforations began in January 1854, and the first officially perforated stamps were issued in February 1854. However, stamps from Henry Archer's perforation trials had been issued the last few months of 1850, then during the 1851 parliamentary session of 1851, at the House of Commons, and finally in 1853/54 after the government paid Mr. Archer £4,000 for his machine and the patent.