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Quick -- what does
each country have that would make a good souvenir and is small
enough to fit into a backpack?
Stamps! I decided
that stamps would be the perfect souvenir.
So I chose coins
instead. Since every country requires you to use their currency when
you pass through their borders, I knew it would be easier to collect
coins than stamps. Stamps, though, have a history all their own;
they tell a story, just like a country music song does.
The very first postal
services were set up by kings and governments exclusively for their
own use. Later, when ordinary citizens wanted to send mail as well,
a system was established that required the person who received the
letter to pay for it at the time of delivery. People were charged
according to how much the letter weighed as well as the distance it
went. In fact, Ben Franklin invented an odometer to measure the
distance the letter carriers traveled.
Things began to
change in 1838 when James Raymond, the postmaster general of New
South Wales, Australia, introduced the world's first prepaid postage
system by stamping letters. It was set up the same way in which a
bank teller stamps your checks.
Two years later, an
Englishman named Sir Rowland Hill came up with the idea of using
postage stamps. Hill suggested lowering the cost of postage to a
penny and, since the stamp was black, it was called the
Penny Black. The Penny Black contained an image of Britain's
Queen Victoria and was first issued in England in May of 1840. The
British postmaster general thought that the postage stamp was a
crazy idea at the time. Hill's next great idea was the mailbox, now
that postage was being prepaid by the sender. (That Hill thinks of
everything, doesn't he?)
Stamps made their way
to America in 1847, and Ben Franklin was the first person to appear
on a U.S. stamp; he was also our first postmaster general. The
5-cent Franklin stamp was soon followed by the 10-cent George
Washington stamp.
In 1860 the Pony
Express opened with a recruitment ad that read, "WANTED: Young,
skinny, wiry fellows not over 18. Must be willing to risk death
daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $25 a week."
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The Pony Express
riders could travel the 2,000 miles from St. Joseph, Mo., to the
West Coast in only 10 days, which was half the time that it took to
travel the distance by train. One of the riders was 14-year-old
William Cody -- as in "Buffalo Bill" Cody -- who once outran a party
of 15 Indians who were trying to rob him. Cody and his fellow riders
delivered news of the outbreak of the Civil War the following year.
After just 10 months, the Pony Express was replaced by the
telegraph.
In case you've always
wondered but were too embarrassed to ask…
--Even though the
English invented the postage stamp, they remain the only country in
the world that does not put their country's name on their
stamps.
--The 1-penny stamp
from New South Wales, Australia, which showed the seal of the
colony, is worth around $5,000 in mint condition today.
--The first person
other than royalty to appear on a British stamp was William
Shakespeare in 1964.
--The best-selling
U.S. commemorative stamp of all time is the 1993 Elvis Presley
stamp, of which 124 million have been sold.
--In 1973 the country
of Bhutan issued a stamp that looked like a record and would
actually play the Bhutanese national anthem.
--Cats were used for
mail service in Belgium in 1879, but this experiment failed because
the cats weren't disciplined enough to deliver the mail!
And that's a good one with which to end
this story.
[Paul
Niemann]
"Invention Mysteries"
is written by Paul Niemann, who sends a new story to your newspaper
editor each week by e-mail rather than splurging for a postage
stamp. He can be reached at
niemann7@aol.com.
Copyright Paul Niemann 2003
Last week's column in LDN:
"Eureka! Who were Archimedes,
Ctesibius and Hero?"
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