One man's effort to make a better postal system

“I never felt there was any

great risk in starting new ventures.

The greatest risk was missing an

opportunity.â€�                                                                                                                        — Robert Noyce

As a high school student, I became interested in postage stamps from all over the world and from ancient times. I collected them, bought them and sold them. And after several years I wondered when postage stamps were introduced into society and what happened before they were introduced. The research was most interesting and it continues to make my mind wiggle when I think about the invention of the postage stamp.

Before the postage stamp came into use, English post offices handled the delivery of letters and packages in a rather unusual way. A letter, for example, would be in an envelope and the post office would measure its weight and assign a cost for its weight and distance of transportation. Then they would deliver it to the addressee.

The addressee, not the sender, was asked to pay for the delivery. And the costs were very high. It made many recipients worry and some refused to accept the mail.

Rowland Hill was the man who changed this completely. He was born in 1795 in a small town in western England. His father was a teacher in Birmingham. When he was 12 years old, Hill became a student-teacher in his father’s school. He taught astronomy. He earned money fixing scientific instruments.  

u           u           u

At the age of 24, Hill set up the Hazelwood School in a town named Edgbaston and he equipped the school with a swimming pool, a science laboratory, a library, and a series of gas-powered lights. Most other schools had nothing similar in their operation. He proposed making science a required course for schools. It did not take much time for students to come to the school from several other countries, and the school prospered. Several years later Hill moved the school to London, where it was even more successful.

Around this time, Hill was reported to have witnessed the attempted delivery of mail to a young woman. She did not have enough money to accept the mail and when the postmaster left with the mail in his hand she started to cry.

Hill asked her what had happened and why she was crying. She said she did not have enough money to pay for the letter, and she told him that the letter was from her fiancé, whom she had not seen for several months.

u           u           u

Hill’s mind responded to that event rather quickly, as it opened his eyes to a basic problem in the postal system structure. He wrote an article titled, “Postal  Reform, Its Importance and Practicability.â€� He passed it on to Lord Melbourne in 1837. The plan called for the post office to use pre-printed envelopes and adhesive postage stamps, a very big difference from how they worked at that time. The following is what his article focused on.

“Perhaps this difficulty for using stamped envelopes in certain cases might be obviated by using 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 the application of a little moisture, attach to the back of the letter to avoid the necessity of re-directing it.�

A very important part of Hill’s article focused on setting up a uniform rate of one penny for each half-ounce of the letter. What this idea did was to make letters affordable for everyone and easy to transmit from sender to recipient. The idea also cut the accounting costs of the Royal Mail organization. They no longer had to keep records of each individual letter. And the back of the penny stamp could be licked to soften the sticky material there to allow the stamp to be attached easily to the envelope. This was a drastic change and it helped to enormously increase the number of letters sent each day.

u           u           u

When Hill appeared before the government with his postal reform plan, including penny stamps and printed envelopes, it was adopted and included in the Parliamentary budget in 1839. Printing started the following year and the stamps went on sale May 8, 1840. The “Penny Black� stamp was used for half-ounce letters, and full ounce letters used the “Two Penny Blue� stamp.

Originally stamps were printed in quantities on a large sheet of paper. There were no holes between the stamps to make it easy to tear the individual stamps apart. The stamps were cut apart by scissors, or torn apart by hand. It was not convenient.

Hill’s design provided that there be small holes lined up between the stamps in each direction. That made it much easier to tear the stamps apart without damaging them. That simple design has continued to this day.

In 1860 Queen Victoria knighted Hill as Knight Commander of Bath for his service to the British Empire, and he was also made a Fellow of the Royal Society. Hill died at his home in 1879.

Other countries began to imitate Hill’s designs. Here in the United States, you can now buy a sheet with 20 stamps on it, 10 on each side. You just peel off one stamp and stick it on your envelope. The stamp has glue on it and you don’t have to lick it. Very nice!

Sidney X. Shore is a scientist, inventor and educator who lives in Sharon and holds more than 30 U.S. patents.
 

Latest News

Club baseball at Fuessenich Park

Travel league baseball came to Torrington Thursday, June 26, when the Berkshire Bears Select Team played the Connecticut Moose 18U squad. The Moose won 6-4 in a back-and-forth game. Two players on the Bears play varsity ball at Housatonic Valley Regional High School: shortstop Anthony Foley and first baseman Wes Allyn. Foley went 1-for-3 at bat with an RBI in the game at Fuessenich Park.

 

  Anthony Foley, rising senior at Housatonic Valley Regional High School, went 1-for-3 at bat for the Bears June 26.Photo by Riley Klein 

 
Siglio Press: Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature

Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.

Richard Kraft

Siglio Press is a small, independent publishing house based in Egremont, Massachusetts, known for producing “uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.” Founded and run by editor and publisher Lisa Pearson, Siglio has, since 2008, designed books that challenge conventions of both form and content.

A visit to Pearson’s airy studio suggests uncommon work, to be sure. Each of four very large tables were covered with what looked to be thousands of miniature squares of inkjet-printed, kaleidoscopically colored pieces of paper. Another table was covered with dozens of book/illustration-size, abstracted images of deer, made up of colored dots. For the enchanted and the mystified, Pearson kindly explained that these pieces were to be collaged together as artworks by the artist Richard Kraft (a frequent contributor to the Siglio Press and Pearson’s husband). The works would be accompanied by writings by two poets, Elizabeth Zuba and Monica Torre, in an as-yet-to-be-named book, inspired by a found copy of a worn French children’s book from the 1930s called “Robin de Bois” (Robin Hood).

Keep ReadingShow less
Cycling season: A roundup of our region’s rentals and where to ride them

Cyclists head south on the rail trail from Copake Falls.

Alec Linden

After a shaky start, summer has well and truly descended upon the Litchfield, Berkshire and Taconic hills, and there is no better way to get out and enjoy long-awaited good weather than on two wheels. Below, find a brief guide for those who feel the pull of the rail trail, but have yet to purchase their own ten-speed. Temporary rides are available in the tri-corner region, and their purveyors are eager to get residents of all ages, abilities and inclinations out into the open road (or bike path).

For those lucky enough to already possess their own bike, perhaps the routes described will inspire a new way to spend a Sunday afternoon. For more, visit lakevillejournal.com/tag/bike-route to check out two ride-guides from local cyclists that will appeal to enthusiasts of many levels looking for a varied trip through the region’s stunning summer scenery.

Keep ReadingShow less