First class mail

The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal systems have generally been established as a government monopoly, with a fee on the article prepaid. Proof of payment is usually in the form of an adhesive postage stamp, but a postage meter is also used for bulk mailing. With the advent of email, the retronym "snail mail" was coined.

Postal authorities often have functions aside from transporting letters. In some countries, a postal, telegraph and telephone (PTT) service oversees the postal system, in addition to telephone and telegraph systems. Some countries' postal systems allow for savings accounts and handle applications for passports.

The Universal Postal Union (UPU), established in 1874, includes 192 member countries and sets the rules for international mail exchanges as a Specialized Agency of the United Nations.

Etymology

The word
mail
' comes from the Middle English word , referring to a travelling bag or pack. It was spelled in that manner until the 17th century and is distinct from the word male. The French have a similar word, , for a trunk or large box, and is the Irish term for a bag. In the 17th century, the word ''mail'' began to appear as a reference for a bag that contained letters: "bag full of letter" (1654). Over the next hundred years the word ''mail'' began to be applied strictly to the letters themselves and the sack as the ''mailbag''. In the 19th century, the British typically used ''mail'' to refer to letters being sent abroad (i.e. on a ship) and ''post'' to refer to letters for domestic delivery. The word ''Post'' is derived from Old French , which ultimately stems from the past participle of the Latin verb 'to lay down or place'. So in the U.K., the Royal Mail delivers the ''post'', whilst in North America both the U.S. Postal Service and Canada Post deliver the
mail
'.

The term ''email'', short for "electronic mail", first appeared in the 1970s. The term ''snail mail'' is a retronym to distinguish it from the quicker email. Various dates have been given for its first use.

History

The practice of communication by written documents carried by an intermediary from one person or place to another almost certainly dates back nearly to the invention of writing. However, the development of formal postal systems occurred much later. The first documented use of an organized courier service for the dissemination of written documents is in Egypt, where Pharaohs used couriers to send out decrees throughout the territory of the state (2400 BCE). The earliest surviving piece of mail is also Egyptian, dating to 255 BCE.

Persia (Iran)

The first credible claim for the development of a real postal system comes from Ancient Persia. The best-documented claim (Xenophon) attributes the invention to the Persian King Cyrus the Great (550 BCE), who mandated that every province in his kingdom would organize reception and delivery of post to each of its citizens. He also negotiated with neighboring countries to do the same and had roads built from the city of Post in Western Iran all the way up to the city of Hakha in the East. Other writers credit his successor Darius I of Persia (521 BCE). Other sources claim much earlier dates for an Assyrian postal system, with credit given to Hammurabi (1700 BCE) and Sargon II (722 BCE). Mail may not have been the primary mission of this postal service, however. The role of the system as an intelligence gathering apparatus is well documented, and the service was (later) called ''angariae'', a term that in time came to indicate a tax system. The Old Testament (Esther, VIII) makes mention of this system: Ahasuerus, king of Medes, used couriers for communicating his decisions.

The Persian system worked using stations (called Chapar-Khaneh), whence the message carrier (called Chapar) would ride to the next post, whereupon he would swap his horse with a fresh one for maximum performance and delivery speed. Herodotus