A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail). Then the stamp is affixed to the face or address-side of any item of mail—an envelope or other postal cover (e.g., packet, box, mailing cylinder)—which they wish to send. The item is then processed by the postal system, where a postmark or cancellation mark—in modern usage indicating date and point of origin of mailing—is applied to the stamp and its left and right sides to prevent its reuse. Next the item is delivered to its address.
Always featuring the name of the issuing nation (with the exception of the United Kingdom), a denomination of its value, and often an illustration of persons, events, institutions, or natural realities that symbolize the nation's traditions and values, every stamp is printed on a piece of usually rectangular, but sometimes triangular or otherwise shaped special custom-made paper whose back is either glazed with an adhesive gum or self-adhesive.
Because governments issue stamps of different denominations in unequal numbers and routinely discontinue some lines and introduce others, and because of their illustrations and association with the social and political realities of the time of their issue, they are often prized for their beauty and historical significance by stamp collectors, whose study of their history and of mailing systems is called philately. Because collectors often buy stamps from an issuing agency with no intention to use them for postage, the revenues from such purchases and payments of postage can make them a source of net profit to that agency. On 1 May 1840, Sir Rowland Hill invented the Penny Black, the first adhesive postage stamp issued in the United Kingdom, selecting a simple design that showed Queen Victoria's profile. The artist Henry Corbould drew her image, basing his work on a medal by William Wyon. Perkins, Bacon & Petch, a leading security printing firm printed the stamp. Within three years postage stamps were introduced in Switzerland and Brazil, a little later in the United States, and by 1860, they were in 90 countries around the world. The first postage stamps did not need to show the issuing country, so no country name was included on them. Thus the United Kingdom remains the only country in the world to omit its name on postage stamps; the monarch's image signifies the United Kingdom as the country of origin.
Invention Throughout modern history numerous methods were used to indicate that postage had been paid on a mailed item, so several different men have received credit for inventing the postage stamp.
William Dockwra In April 1680, William Dockwra, an English searcher at the customs-house in London, and his partner Robert Murray established the London Penny Post. The LPP was a mail system that delivered letters and small parcels up to a pound in weight and £10 in value inside the city of London for the sum of one penny. Confirmation of paid postage was indicated by the use of a hand stamp to frank the mailed item. Though this "stamp" was applied to the letter or parcel itself, rather than to a separate piece of paper, it is considered by many historians to be the world's first postage stamp.
Lovrenc Košir
In 1835, the civil servant Lovrenc Košir from Ljubljana in Austria-Hungary (now Slovenia), suggested the use of "artificially affixed postal tax stamps""New Issues: Technical Details: Lovrenc Košir" Stanley Gibbons, archived on 10 May 2011 by Internet Archive using "gepresste Papieroblate" ("pressed paper wafers"), but although civil bureaucrats considered the suggestion in detail, it was not adopted.Lovrenc Košir stampdomain.com 2012. Retrieved 1 March 2012. Archived here."Meet the new Rowland Hill" in Gibbons Stamp Monthly, April 1949, p. 85 The 'Papieroblate' were to produce stamps as paper decals so thin as to prevent their reuse.A History of Victorian Postage by Gerard Cheshire, 2017, ,
Rowland Hill
In 1836, Robert Wallace, a Member of (British) Parliament, gave Sir Rowland Hill numerous books and documents about the postal service, which Hill described as a "half hundred weight of material".The Life of Sir Rowland Hill, p. 246Hill, Rowland & Hill, George Birkbeck, The Life of Sir Rowland Hill and the History of the Penny Post, Thomas De La Rue, 1880, p. 242 After a detailed study, on 4 January 1837 Hill submitted a pamphlet entitled Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Thomas Spring Rice, which was marked "private and confidential", and not released to the general public.Muir, Douglas N, Postal Reform & the Penny Black, National Postal Museum, 1990, p. 42 The Chancellor summoned Hill to a meeting at which he suggested improvements and changes to be presented in a supplement, which Hill duly produced and submitted on 28 January 1837.The Life of Sir Rowland Hill, p. 264 Hill wrote Post Office Reform while he served as secretary of the South Australian Colonization Commission. The colonization of South Australia roughly followed Edward Gibbon Wakefield's scheme of colonization which emphasized the uniform pricing of land, and Wakefield's ideas influenced Hill's argument for the uniform pricing of postal rates.
Summoned to give evidence before the Commission for Post Office Enquiry on 13 February 1837, Hill read from the letter he wrote to the Chancellor that included a statement saying that the 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..."The Life of Sir Rowland Hill, p. 269The Ninth Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Management of the Post-office Department, 1837, p. 32 This would eventually become the first unambiguous description of a modern adhesive postage stamp (though the term "postage stamp" originated at a later date). Shortly afterward, Hill's revision of the booklet, dated 22 February 1837, containing some 28,000 words, incorporating the supplement given to the Chancellor and statements he made to the commission, was published and made available to the general public. 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 paid-postage based on 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 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 reforms he introduced to the United Kingdom postal system appear on several of its commemorative stamps.
James Chalmers In the 1881 book The Penny Postage Scheme of 1837, Scotsman Patrick Chalmers claimed that his father, James Chalmers, published an essay in August 1834 describing and advocating a postage stamp, but submitted no evidence of the essay's existence. Nevertheless, until he died in 1891, Patrick Chalmers campaigned to have his father recognized as the inventor of the postage stamp.Chalmers, Patrick, The Penny Postage Scheme of 1837, Effingham Wilson, 1881
The first independent evidence for Chalmers' claim is an essay, dated 8 February 1838 and received by the Post Office on 17 February 1838, in which he proposed adhesive postage stamps to the General Post Office. In this approximately 800-word document concerning methods of indicating that postage had been paid on mail he states:
Chalmers' original document is now in the United Kingdom's National Postal Museum.
Since Chalmers used the same postage denominations that Hill had proposed in February 1837, it is clear that he was aware of Hill's proposals, but whether he obtained a copy of Hill's booklet or simply read about it in one or both of the two detailed accounts (25 March 1837The Times, 25 March 1837 and 20 December 1837The Times, 20 December 1837) published in The Times is unknown. Neither article mentioned "a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp", so Chalmers could not have known that Hill had made such a proposal. This suggests that either Chalmers had previously read Hill's booklet and was merely elaborating Hill's idea, or he had 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 which he organized were presented on 1 May 1838 (from Dunbar and Cupar), 14 May 1838 (from the county of Forfar), and 12 June 1839. At this same time, other groups organized petitions and presented them to Parliament. All petitions for consumer-oriented, low-cost, volume-based postal rates followed publication of Hill's proposals.
Other claimants Other claimants include or have includedMackay, James, The Guinness Book of Stamps Facts & Feats, pp. 73–74, Guinness Superlatives Limited, 1982, Ferdinand Egarter of Spittal, Austria Samuel Forrester, a Scottish tax official John Gray of the British Museum Samuel Roberts of Llanbrynmair, Wales Francis Worrell Stevens, schoolmaster at Loughton Curry Gabriel Treffenberg from Sweden Charles Whiting, a London stationer
History The nineteenth century
Postage stamps have facilitated the delivery of mail since the 1840s. Before then, 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 part of an attempt to 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.National Postal Museum: World’s First Postage Stamps There are varying accounts of the inventor or inventors of the stamp.
Before the introduction of postage stamps, mail in the United Kingdom 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. Concurrently with the first stamps, the United Kingdom offered wrappers for mail. Later related inventions include postal stationery such as prepaid-postage envelopes, post cards, lettercards, aerogrammes, and postage meters.