history of mail delivery

RFD became a political football, with politicians promising it to voters and using it themselves to reach voters. Congress authorized airmail postage of 24 cents per ounce, including special delivery. Long before the operations of the legendary Pony Express, trains were the main mode of transportation for mail. Even after the Postal Department came to be, most mail was delivered on foot or by horseback, but it has been delivered by many modes of transport since. One of these postal riders was Israel Bissell , one of the riders commissioned to alert the colonies that the British troops were moving in the early stages of the American War for Independence. In 1775, before the colonists signed the Declaration of Independence to break away from English rule, they established the postal service as a way to rebel against the costly, unfair rules enacted by the Royal Mail System. Prior to establishing the United States postal service, mail was delivered by friends and unofficial messengers. The story goes that a Cleveland, Ohio postal employee by the name of Joseph William Briggs was so torn up by seeing women lined up in the cold to see if a letter had arrived from a son or husband at the front lines that he started delivering mail to homes -- at no extra cost. A new report concludes that the Graham-Cassidy proposal would reduce federal funding to states by $215 billion by 2026. The first catalog consisted of a single 8- by 12-inch sheet of paper with a price list showing the merchandise for sale with ordering instructions. Explore the past, glimpse the future. The U.S. has a rough track record with how it treats new parents, but there are reasons to believe that this could soon be a thing of the past. Prior to RFD, individuals living in remote homesteads had to pick up mail themselves at sometimes distant post offices or pay private carriers for delivery. It worked, and a prototype coding and sortation machine, capable of processing all of the mail then generated by the City of Ottawa, was built by Canadian manufacturers in 1956. Origins of Royal Mail 1516: Henry VIII knighted Brian Tuke, the first Master of the Posts. Left, mail carrier Arthur LeBlanc from Berlin, New Hampshire, delivering post from his horse-drawn sled, 1950. Looking back over the history of mail, society in general has come a long way from delivering a message by horseback or ship and awaiting the arrival which could take weeks, to the nearly instantaneous sending of birthday card, bills, and correspondence with the click of a mouse. In addition, there were undoubtedly state-sponsored messages transported along the Silk Road, between traders in different empires, probably since its inception in the 3rd century BCE. However, due to the efficiency of the postal service, there was a tremendous increase in mail volume, and the postal service began to implement a number system to help with delivery called the Zoning Improvement Plan, or the ZIP Code. 3 The Army stepped in to deliver the mail, for a time but was ill prepared to fill the role of the companies that had been jilted. The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government and has been responsible for providing postal services in the U.S. since its start in 1775. The Post Office Department hired post riders who would take desolate roads hundreds of miles through treacherous conditions to deliver the mail to the various post offices. On July 26, 1775, the U.S. postal system is established by the Second Continental Congress, with Benjamin Franklin as its first postmaster general. The same type of courier service was likely used to administer taxes and keep up to date on far-flung reaches of most empires, such as the Persian empire in the Fertile Crescent (500–220 BCE), the Han dynasty in China (306 BCE–221 CE), the Islamic Empire (622–1923 CE) in Arabia, the Inca empire in Peru (1250–1550 CE), and the Mughal empire in India (1650–1857 CE). A Continental Congress was organized at Philadelphia in May 1775 to establish an independent government. One of the first things the breakaway colonies did in 1775 – even before such tiddles as, say, approving a Declaration of Independence --was to recognize their own competing postal system with Benjamin Franklin at its head. The first mail order catalog was distributed in 1872 by Aaron Montgomery Ward (1843–1913) selling goods primarily to rural farmers who had difficulty making it out to the big cities for commerce. Think of it as a Bronze Age bill of lading. Most mail was still being transported the same way in the middle of the 19th century, when stagecoaches carried letters and packages to the West coast. Prior to that time, letters and newspapers had occasionally found their way to the military post at Fort Dearborn, carried by military couriers on a route that linked Fort Dearborn with Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Green Bay, Wisconsin. Mail, consisting mostly of government dispatches, was carried from place to place by horse or horse-drawn wagon in ancient Egypt and Persia. By 3500–3100 BCE, the Uruk-period Mesopotamian trade network had ballooned, and they wrapped their clay tokens in thin sheets of clay that were then baked. He set up mailboxes and delivered any letters placed in them if they used the postage pre-paid envelopes that he sold. As the Smithsonian’s Daniel Gifford pointed out last year, by 1909 the Post Office was deeply in the red: From the very beginning in 1909 when the $17 million shortfall was announced, Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock kept the blame on two specific causes: “Recent investigations have shown that the two great sources of loss to the postal revenues are second-class mail matter and rural delivery. The city had to provide sidewalks and crosswalks, ensure that streets were named and lit, and assign numbers to houses. Palmer’s plan was to convey the mail by coaches in the same way that packages were delivered. Instead of picking an off-the-shelf vehicle and tailoring it to mail delivery, the USPS called for a unique truck suited exclusively for the task. Hill created the first uniform postage rates that were based on weight, rather than size. ROYAL MAIL TIME-LINE. Food policy experts weigh in on the possibilities of individual diet choices and sustainable production methods. To give a flavour of this 500-year history, Royal Mail has produced a time-line which picks out the key moment’s in the institution’s development (illustrated with some of the pictures from the online gallery). The Canadian Post Office Department had commissioned Levy to design and supervise the building of a new, electronic, computer-controlled, automatic mail sortation system for Canada. Paper envelopes, known as chih poh, were used to store gifts of money. The Mail is Arriving Way too Late, Watchdog Reports, "Long-Distance Trade and Economy before and During the Age of Empires, Developments in Egypt's Early Islamic Postal System (with an Edition of P.Khalili Ii 5), The History of the Postal Monopoly in the United States, The Postal Service and the Hour as a Unit of Time in Antiquity, Spies and Mailmen and the Royal Road to Persia. In some cities you could either pay an extra two cents for personal delivery (which was pretty much how mail carriers made a living) or have a private outfit bring mail to you. In 1896 the Post Office experimented with rural mail delivery, and by 1902 daily delivery was instituted across the nation (although some really remote places, like at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, only get mail three times a week) and some locales, like the beach burg of Summerland just south of Pacific Standard’s Santa Barbara, California HQ, requires mail pickup at the local post office. Chapter I. Eventually the tokens were done away with and a tablet with markings was used—and then writing really took off. In 1934, monopolistic contract disputes between the post office and the airmail carriers came to a head, resulting in President Roosevelt ordering the total cancellation of all contracts for air mail delivery services in what became known as the Air Mail Scandal. We hope you enjoy exploring our rich history. But as the postman picketh up, he also delivereth. Mary Bellis covered inventions and inventors for ThoughtCo for 18 years. There’s been government-run or officially sanctioned postal service in North America since at least 1692, when Britain’s monarchy specifically appointed a proto-postmaster, Thomas Neale, to set up a system in the colonies. By 1832, contracts were granted to use rail tra… The earliest surviving piece of mail is also Egyptian, which dates back to 255 BCE, recovered from the Oxyrhynchus papyri cache. The start of writing occurs in Mesopotamia at least 9,500 years ago, and it involved the use of clay tokens, blobs of baked clay which had dots or lines incised in them representing quantities of goods. She is known for her independent films and documentaries, including one about Alexander Graham Bell. Michael Todd is the social science communications manager for SAGE Publications. The Birth of Modern Mail Systems In 1653, Frenchman Jean-Jacques Renouard de Villayer (1607–1691) established a postal system in Paris. Vecchio / Getty Images A large group of mail carriers leaving the General Post Office early in the morning to start their rounds in New York City at Christmas, 1955. But the voices of certain communities are often left behind. In 1923, for example, the same year that once-a-day city delivery reared its head, new homes were required to have a box or slot for the carrier to slip mail into; no more knocking and waiting to hand deliver the post. Why Does the US Postal Service Lose Money? despite frequent suggestions from Postal Service brass dating back to 1976, Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe explained to reporters, Smithsonian’s Daniel Gifford pointed out last year. Were done away with and a tablet with markings was used—and then writing really took off communities often... 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