You’ve got (snail) mail!

Writing a letter is inherently charming and even romantic, even if you are only writing to your grandparents. The feel of crisp, fresh paper; the careful thought before you begin (remember, you don’t have a delete option here), putting the pen to paper, finishing it, folding it, inserting it into the envelope and sealing it, putting down the address and finally putting on the stamp. But with the advent of emails and its subsequent popularity, writing letters on paper has become a somewhat antiquated art. Nevertheless, this old fashioned ‘snail mail’ as it is now known as, is still going strong. The US postal service delivers over 200 billion letters and packages every year, although most of it would probably be commercial.

The history of the postal service probably goes back centuries, as communication of a message from one person to another through an intermediary is likely to have begun during the times when humans begun to settle down, although the development of a formal postal system like the one that exists today came much later; till then, couriers, messengers and private postal services carried mail. The Persian, Roman, Chinese and Assyrian empires had postal systems but did not use stamps and in all the above services the recipient paid on delivery.

The Pharaohs of Egypt are documented to be the first to use an organised courier system in order to deliver their diktats to their subjects. This was around 2400 BC. As far as the first real postal system is concerned, there are claims and counter-claims. It is said that the Persian king, ‘Darius I, the Great’ (521 BC) was the one responsible for the first postal system but there are also claims that the first organised postal system was in Assyria and is credited to Saragon II (722 BC), and even Hammurabi (1700 BC) however it is likely that the system was more of an intelligence gathering and a tax collecting device.

The next likeliest claimant to the title is China, although the exact date is unknown, it is documented that during the Qin dynasty (221 BC-207 BC), China had a well-organised postal system but it is highly probable that the origin went back by at least a 1000 years, i.e. during the Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC)

The first best-documented postal service is that of Rome and was created during the time of Augustus Caesar (62 BC-AD 14). The service was called ‘cursus publicus’ and had light carriages (rhedae) with fast horses. There was also a slower service which had two-wheels carts (birolae) pulled by oxen. Thus the concept of regular and speed post was very much in existence even then. The service was originally for Government correspondence but soon even citizens had access to it.

The Latin name for mail, ‘posta’ is derived from stations created en-route called ‘posata’ or ‘pausata’, which means ‘place of rest’. Messengers would rest here during their voyages. These stations were placed at strategic locations where major routes criss-crossed and where huge amounts of mails had to be delivered.

The current system, including the ‘self adhesive stamps’ & ‘uniform postal rates’ was designed by James Chalmers around 1834 and in 1837 Rowland Hill published a book, ‘Postal Reform: its Importance and Practibility (sic)’, where he reasoned that charges should be levied onto the sender and not the receiver, as the receiver was being made to pay for mails that he might not want and in fact there had been instances where the receiver had refused to accept them. The book also argued in favour of a uniform rate based on the weight of the package and not the distance, as it would help save the government huge sums of money on accounting.

The British Post Office issued the first official stamp in 1840 and since they were for internal use, had no country name on them. Toady the United Kingdom is the only country that is not required to identify the stamps used by it for international mails, a sort of privilege it enjoys for being the first country to issue stamps.

As mentioned earlier, payment for the service is usually through attachment of pre-paid postage stamps. Stamps have now become the worldwide method of collecting advance charges and taxes for delivering mail. The postal service affixes the stamp with a mark, effectively cancelling the stamp, so that it cannot be used again.

But if you are under the impression that stamps once used are worthless, think again; although most are, a few are not and can fetch millions. For instance one of the most expensive stamps bought till date is a Swedish ‘3 skilling banco’ stamp that was issued in yellow instead of the normal green. Found in 1885, in 1996 it was sold for nearly $2.27 million. Of course this may have been an exception but stamps in used and in mint condition are known to have prices that run into thousand of dollars. Spending thousands on something actually worth pennies is not madness, but a hobby called ‘philately’. It is one of the most widely pursued hobbies and has clubs, associations and groups all over the globe. The value of the stamp depends on the country of origin, its year of printing, numbers in circulation, certain anomalies etc. An example of an anomaly is ‘the Inverted Jenny’ (1918), a 24-cent stamp with an upside-down biplane on it, which could get you around $200,000.

So don’t forget to go through your old mails and if you are not that old, then check your parent’s and even your grandparent’s mails. You never know luck might give you its stamp of approval.