HOME
*



picture info

Postmark
A postmark is a postal marking made on an envelope, parcel, postcard or the like, indicating the place, date and time that the item was delivered into the care of a postal service, or sometimes indicating where and when received or in transit. Modern postmarks are often applied simultaneously with the cancellation or killer that marks postage stamps as having been used. Sometimes a postmark alone is used to cancel stamps, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. Postmarks may be applied by handstamp or machine, using methods such as rollers or inkjets, while digital postmarks are a recent innovation. History The first postmark, called the "Bishop mark", was introduced by English Postmaster General Henry Bishop in 1661 and showed only the day and month of mailing to prevent the delay of the mail by carriers. In England during the latter part of the 17th century, several postmarks were devised for use with the London Penny Post, a postal system that delivered mai ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Postmark USS Texas 1932
A postmark is a postal marking made on an envelope, parcel, postcard or the like, indicating the place, date and time that the item was delivered into the care of a postal service, or sometimes indicating where and when received or in transit. Modern postmarks are often applied simultaneously with the cancellation or killer that marks postage stamps as having been used. Sometimes a postmark alone is used to cancel stamps, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. Postmarks may be applied by handstamp or machine, using methods such as rollers or inkjets, while digital postmarks are a recent innovation. History The first postmark, called the "Bishop mark", was introduced by English Postmaster General Henry Bishop in 1661 and showed only the day and month of mailing to prevent the delay of the mail by carriers. In England during the latter part of the 17th century, several postmarks were devised for use with the London Penny Post, a postal system that delivered ma ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Digital Postmark
A Digital Postmark (DPM) is a technology that applies a trusted time stamp issued by a postal operator to an electronic document, validates electronic signatures, and stores and archives all non-repudiation data needed to support a potential court challenge. It guarantees the certainty of date and time of the postmarking. This global standard was renamed the Electronic Postal Certification Mark (EPCM) in 2007 shortly after a new iteration of the technology was developed by Microsoft and Poste Italiane. The key addition to the traditional postmarking technology was integrity of the electronically postmarked item, meaning any kind of falsification and tampering will be easily and definitely detected. Additionally, content confidentiality is guaranteed since document certification is carried out without access or reading by the postal operator. The EPCM will eventually be available through the UPU to all international postal operators in the 191 member countries willing to be compli ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Cancellation (mail)
A cancellation (or cancel for short; French: ) is a postal marking applied on a postage stamp or postal stationery to deface the stamp and to prevent its reuse. Cancellations come in a huge variety of designs, shapes, sizes, and colors. Modern cancellations commonly include the date and post office location where the stamps were mailed, in addition to lines or bars designed to cover the stamp itself. The term "postmark" refers specifically to the part that contains the date and posting location, but the term is often used interchangeably with "cancellation" as it may serve that purpose. The portion of a cancellation that is designed to deface the stamp and does not contain writing is also called the "obliteration" Scott US p. 30A. or killer. Some stamps are issued pre-cancelled with a printed or stamped cancellation and do not need to have a cancellation added. Cancellations can affect the value of stamps to collectors, positively or negatively. Cancellations of some countries ha ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Pony Express
The Pony Express was an American express mail service that used relays of horse-mounted riders. It operated from April 3, 1860, to October 26, 1861, between Missouri and California. It was operated by the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company. During its 18 months of operation, the Pony Express reduced the time for messages to travel between the east and west US coast to about 10 days. It became the west's most direct means of eastwest communication before the first transcontinental telegraph was established (October 24, 1861), and was vital for tying the new U.S. state of California with the rest of the United States. Despite a heavy subsidy, the Pony Express was not a financial success and went bankrupt in 18 months, when a faster telegraph service was established. Nevertheless, it demonstrated that a unified transcontinental system of communications could be established and operated year-round. When replaced by the telegraph, the Pony Express quick ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

London Penny Post
The London Penny Post was a premier postal system whose function was to deliver mail within London and its immediate suburbs for the modest sum of one penny. The Penny Post was established in 1680 by William Dockwra and his business partner, Robert Murray. Dockwra was a merchant and a member of the Armourer and Brasiers Livery Company and was appointed a Customs Under-Searcher for the Port of London in 1663. Murray would later become clerk in the excise office of the Penny Post. The London Penny Post mail service was launched with weeks of publicity preceding it on 27 March 1680. The new London Penny Post provided the city of London with a much needed intra-city mail delivery system. The new Penny Post was influential in establishing a model system and pattern for the various Provincial English Penny Posts in the years that followed. It was the first postal system to use hand-stamps to postmark the mail to indicate the place and time of the mailing and that its postage had been p ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Postal Marking
A postal marking is any kind of annotation applied to a letter by a postal service. The most common types are postmarks and cancellations; almost every letter will have those. Less common types include forwarding addresses, routing annotations, warnings, postage due notices and explanations, such as for damaged or delayed mail and censored or inspected mail. A key part of postal history is the identification of postal markings, their purpose, and period of use. Service marks provide information to the sender, recipient, or another post office. Advice marks notify about forwarding, missending, letters received in bad condition, letters received too late for delivery by a certain time, or the reason for a delay in mail delivery. (For example, a letter may be marked "snowbank" if snow accumulation not cleared by the potential recipient, or for whatever other reason, makes it difficult or impossible for the carrier to deliver the mail.) Dead letter offices would use various marki ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Machine Postmark
{{Globalize, article, USA, 2name=the United States, date=November 2016 A machine postmark or machine cancellation is a postmark or cancellation on mail that is applied by a mechanical device rather than with the use of a handstamp. Nearly all machine-cancellation devices apply both postmark and cancellation simultaneously. While some mail is cancelled using handstamps, machine cancellation is ubiquitous, and in the industrialized nations the vast majority of mail is cancelled by machine. United States In the United States, the first successful postmarking machine was developed by Thomas Leavitt in the 1870s, with covers known from 1876. By 1880 Leavitt machines were in use in twenty cities. Cancellations were of a variety of forms, including horizontal and diagonal lines, as well as "football" shapes. The American Postal Machines Company soon got into the business, with postmarks appearing from 1884, and became successful with a machine known for its speed of processing. AP ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Railway Post Office
In Canada and the United States, a railway post office, commonly abbreviated as RPO, was a railroad car that was normally operated in passenger service as a means to sort mail en route, in order to speed delivery. The RPO was staffed by highly trained Railway Mail Service postal clerks, and was off-limits to the passengers on the train. In the UK and Ireland, the equivalent term was travelling post office (TPO). From the middle of the 19th century, many American railroads earned substantial revenues through contracts with the U.S. Post Office Department (USPOD) to carry mail aboard high-speed passenger trains; and the Railway Mail Service enforced various standardized designs on RPOs. In fact, a number of companies maintained passenger routes where the financial losses from moving people were more than offset by transporting the mail. History The world's first official carriage of mail by rail was by the United Kingdom's General Post Office in November 1830, using adapted rail ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Meter Label
The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefixed forms are also used relatively frequently. The metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle, so the Earth's circumference is approximately  km. In 1799, the metre was redefined in terms of a prototype metre bar (the actual bar used was changed in 1889). In 1960, the metre was redefined in terms of a certain number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86. The current definition was adopted in 1983 and modified slightly in 2002 to clarify that the metre is a measure of proper length. From 1983 until 2019, the metre was formally defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in of a second. After the 2019 redefiniti ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Fancy Cancel
A fancy cancel is a postal cancellation that includes an artistic design. Although the term may be used of modern machine cancellations that include artwork, it primarily refers to the designs carved in cork and used in 19th century post offices of the United States. When postage stamps were introduced in the US in 1847, postmasters were required to deface them to prevent reuse, but it was left up to them to decide exactly how to do this, and not infrequently clerks would use whatever was at hand, including pens and "PAID" handstamps left over from the pre-stamp era. A number of offices began to use cork bottle stoppers dipped in ink. These worked well, but would tend to blot out the entire stamp making it difficult to check the denomination, and so clerks began to carve a groove across the middle of the cork, making two semicircles. Further enhancements included two grooves cut crosswise (the four-piece "country pie"), and then two more, for the eight-segment "city pie", a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Marcophily
Marcophily, occasionally called Marcophilately, is the specialised study and collection of postmarks, cancellations and postal markings applied by hand or machine on mail that passes through a postal system and applied by the postal operator through whose domain they pass. Commatology was a term used prior to World War II but is rarely used today. Two branches of marcophilists exist - those who are mainly interested in the details, style and design of the markings, and those who take into account the political, social, and postal history surrounding them. Large cities that have many post offices offer great study opportunities due to the vast range of handstamps or machine cancellations in use over any time period. It offers vast study areas to select a topic from for study or collection. While strictly speaking it is not a postal history Postal history is the study of postal systems and how they operate and, or, the study of the use of postage stamps and covers and associ ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Artistamp
The term artistamp (a portmanteau of the words "artist" and "stamp") or artist's stamp refers to a postage stamp-like art form used to depict or commemorate any subject its creator chooses. Artistamps are a form of Cinderella stamps in that they are not valid for postage, but they differ from forgeries or bogus Illegal stamps in that typically the creator has no intent to defraud postal authorities or stamp collectors. Artistamp creators often include their work on legitimate mail, alongside valid postage stamps, in order to decorate the envelope with their art. In many countries this practice is legal, provided the artistamp is not passed off as or likely to be mistaken for a genuine postage stamp. When so combined (and sometimes, less strictly speaking, even when not so) the artistamp may be considered part of the mail art genre. Irony, satire, humor, eroticism and subversion of governmental authority are frequent characteristics of artistamps. Artists may leverage the expect ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]