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Rudimentary postal systems date back to ancient Persia.
Genghis Khan used an efficient postal station system to keep his Mongol Empire running smoothly. At its height, there were as many as 1400 postal stations dotted around China alone, and by all accounts, the system was extremely efficient. Another
well documented early postal service came into existence under the reign of Augustus Caesar in Rome.
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One man changed the face of the United Kingdom postal service forever.
Sir Rowland Hill was responsible for the wide reaching postal system reforms in 1840. He introduced the innovative concept of penny postage and a pre-payment system. As part of his reforms he called for ways of making the sender pay for postage by way of adhesive postage stamps and pre-printed envelopes.
These reforms led to the invention of the postage stamp, the Penny Black, which could send a letter less than half an ounce in weight anywhere in the UK. The Penny Black postage stamp first went on sale 1st May 1840 and was followed a few days later by the two pence Blue. Each new postage stamp carried an engraving of a young Queen Victoria and the stamps were an instant success. The country’s name, the United Kingdom, was not included on stamps, and to this day the United Kingdom remains the only country to use the Monarch’s head as identification.
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Perforations around the edge of the postage stamp soon became necessary as postage stamps became more widespread. The first device to perforate large sheets of postage stamps was invented by Henry Archer. The device was modified several times and the UK postal service eventually brought it into general use, the first perforated postage stamps were the Penny Red issued in 1854.
In the United States, postmasters had been issuing their own stamps since around 1845, but the first official US postage stamps came into being in 1847 with the production of 5 and 10 cent stamps featuring engravings of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.
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However, despite the relative popularity of early US postage stamps, it was not until Congress decided to reduce and modify the rates of postage and passed the Act of March 3, 1855, requiring pre-payment postage on all mail sent within the United States, that postage stamps really took off.
Other countries soon followed with their own postage stamp issues. Most original postage stamps depicted the Kings, Queens, and Presidents, or similar, but a few used other designs and formats, some of which were popular, whereas others were not. Every year, the production of stamps worldwide exceeds the postal requirements, and this is mainly as a result of the extra stamps produced for collectors. Stamp collecting remains as popular today as it was many decades ago.
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