
Congress eventually authorized the United States in March of 1847 to produce a government issued postage stamp. Postage rates were first standardized in 1845. Post Office Department quickly bought Greig’s business and then continued use of adhesive stamps to prepay postage. Greig’s City Dispatch Post that issued the first adhesive postage stamps in the United States on February 1, 1842. Surprisingly, it was a private New York City mail service, Alexander M. They took a little longer to be issued in the United States where the first perforated stamps came out in 1857. However by 1854, perforated stamps were issued. When stamps were first issued they were printed on a large sheet of paper with adhesive backing and had to be individually cut apart. There were later inventions that made postage stamps more easily useable. Sir Rowland Hill’s brother Edwin Hill actually invented an envelope folding machine that could quickly fold a sheet of paper into an envelope so that the increased demand for envelopes could be met as well. And Sir Rowland Hill wasn’t the only member of the Hill family to have an impact on mail delivery as we know it. The popularity of prepaid postage and postage rates based on weight caused the use of both envelopes and stamps to surge. These ideas revolutionized mail delivery and were soon adopted by other nations around the world. Once these two ideas were implemented the use of the postal service started increasing dramatically. Along with the novel idea of pre-paid postage, Sir Rowland Hill also created the first uniform postal rates that were based on weight rather than size. The “Penny Black” changed how mail was delivered. It was a black and white image of Queen Victoria’s head, worth one penny, and was called the British penny black stamp. This government issued postage stamp made its debut in England on May 6, 1840. He became the Post Master General and designed the very first stamp.

It was such a momentous achievement that he was eventually knighted and became Sir Rowland Hill. This stamp made prepaying postage both easy and practical.

In 1837, a school teacher from England, Rowland Hill, invented the first adhesive postage stamp. The Postal Service wasn’t happy with this arrangement and decided it needed a system that worked better.
#STAMP ON ENVELOPE CODE#
The receiving party was expected to pay the postage and if they could discover the message from the code on the outside of the mail they would simply refuse delivery and save themselves the cost of paying for the item. It was very expensive to mail even one sheet of paper and so people began to devise codes and use trickery to get around paying for the delivery of the mail.


By the mid 1800’s, mail often took the form of a simply folded sheet of paper onto which the delivery address was written on the outside of the paper and the message on the inside of the paper. They were called Bishop’s Marks and contained the day and month the item was mailed. In 1661, postmarks were invented by Henry Bishop and were used by the London General Post Office. Before stamps came into existence, mail was hand stamped or inked. So why were stamps created, and what is their history? To understand the importance of postage stamps we need to look at what conditions were like before they were invented. The lesson here is that seemingly insignificant things that are invisible or seldom noticed, like postage stamps, can actually have tremendous impact. Then the overwhelming necessity of either oxygen or stamps becomes very apparent. But they do have one thing in common: you usually don’t realize you need them until you’ve run out. Postage stamps and oxygen don’t usually come to mind in the same thought, or train of thought, nor do they appear to be alike in any way.
