History of the Postage Stamp

Today we don’t give it a second thought when we peel a postage stamp off a card and stick it onto an envelope. In fact, many bypass the postage stamp altogether and print their postage onto postal labels straight from their printer.

However, we have not always had the convenience of the internet or of adhesive paper stamps.

Have you ever wondered about the history of the postage stamp?

Before the use of stamps, letters were hand stamped or postmarked with ink.

The first postage stamp began with Great Britain’s Penny Post, a stamp released on May 6, 1840. The Penny Black was engraved with the profile of the head of Queen Victoria, whose image remained on all Britain’s stamps for the next sixty years.

The inventor of the stamp, Rowland Hill, was a schoolmaster in England when he invented the adhesive postage stamp in 1837, an act for which he was knighted. In addition to creating the first postage stamp, however, he also created the first uniform postal rates, basing the cost of shipping on weight rather than size. The stamps combined with uniform postal rates made the prepayment of mail not only possible, but also practical.

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