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A Brief History of Postage Stamps The first organized system for carrying written messages was established by the Persians under Darius, who created a network of mounted couriers stationed at various points throughout his vast empire, ready to speed letters to any part of the country. These early "Pony Express" riders were so efficient that they inspired the ancient Greek Historian Herodotus to coin the famous phrase which appears on the facade of the New York City post office building: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." Darius' system was adopted and expanded upon by Caesar Augustus, whose "Cursus Publicus" included couriers on foot, on horseback, and in carriages, travelling well-maintained high-ways connecting Rome with every outlying territory of the Roman Empire. The "Cursus Publicus" was known familiarly as the "post" system because of the way-stations, or posts, established at regular intervals along each route to provide the couriers with food and fresh horses. The first postal system open to the public (the earlier ones had all been exclusively for royal use) was established in 1505 by the Thurn and Taxis families of Austria, who offered to carry letters and parcels anywhere in continental Europe for anyone who could pay the fee. Organized under a royal license, the Thurn and Taxis system survived for more than 350 years, well into the modern postal era. The Thurn and Taxis system was privately-owned, and so was the London Penny Post when it was inaugurated in 1680 by a businessman named William Dockwra. But the Penny Post proved to be so profitable that the government, seeing in it an idol source of internal revenue, decide to take over its operation for itself. Thus was born, in 1698, the first postal system. Dockwra's Penny Post was a model of Postal efficiency, and it remains to this day. Letterboxes were posted at hundreds of points throughout London, and branch offices were established in every district. For one penny, a letter or parcel deposited at a letterbox or branch station would be picked up, hand stamped to indicate that the postage had been paid, and delivered to any address in the city. Deliveries were made every hour in the business district and from four to eight times a day in the outlying sections. In colonial America, meanwhile, the first post office had been established at Boston in 1639, and by 1691 a uniform postal service was in operation throughout the colonies. The first postal system of the new government of the United States went into operation in 1775, with Benjamin Franklin as the first Postmaster General. Until 1840, however, all these systems operated without the benefit of a postage stamp. Items were hand stamped mostly to show receipt at a post office, and postage was collected from the addressee upon delivery. Many people developed secret codes by which they could cheat the postal services (its in the human nature) : secret marks on the outside of the envelope conveyed the sender's message, and all the addressee had to do was to read the secret message on the envelope, then refuse to accept the letter and refuse to pay the fee. |
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