Do You Know ? "The Birth of Postage Stamp"

The birth of the postage stamp

The advent of postal services gave rise to a problem that remained unresolved for centuries: who should pay the postage – the sender or the recipient? Although practices varied from country to country, it long remained the custom for recipients to pay for receiving mail. But what if the recipient refused? There were many attempts to find a means of guaranteeing that postal service providers received due recompense. In France, Renouard De Velayer, the owner of a small post office, began offering customers small pieces of paper inscribed “receipt for the payment of transport” as early as 1653. In 1814 the Sardinian postal service took up the same idea, but only for a short period. It was not until 6 May 1840 that the pre-payment of postage in the form of an adhesive receipt took off. The postage stamp was born when British post offices began selling the first stamps – the Penny Black and Twopenny Blue – with their portrait of Queen Victoria, as well as two prepaid envelopes. It took some months for the public to get used to the new system, but it worked and, between May 1840 and January 1841, 72 million Penny Blacks were issued. Other countries soon adopted the same system, and the postage stamp became the standard receipt for the service to be rendered. The birth of the postage stamp also gave rise to a new passion: philately.