History Of the Stamp
I don’t suppose I need to tell you what
a postage stamp is. I’m sure you
already know these little pieces of paper
that you stick at the top right of a letter or postcard before mailing it. The designs can vary greatly. I bet you’ve already seen some nice ones. But do you know when and how the postage stamp was born?
The first stamp
was invented in
1840 by an
Englishman called
Sir Rowland Hill.
If you had lived
before him you
would have had to pay a fee to receive a letter delivered to your house. And if you had refused to accept the mail? Who would have paid the postman? No-one.
Did you know the postage stamp
is more than 160 years old?
Did you know the first stamp was
British and called a penny black?
Sir Rowland decided that it was time for things to change. He therefore came up with the brilliant idea of a postage stamp: why not print stickers that would be valid throughout the country and which could be sold to people wishing to mail a letter? And so the postage stamp was born.