Stamps Development

Development of Stamps
Brazil became the second country to use adhesive postage stamps in 1843, and the United States was the third in 1847.
By 1860 most nations had adopted the use of the postage stamp.
Early designs imitated those of Britain.
Monarchies and their territories issued stamps with portraits of their reigning king or queen. The United States depicted George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, two deceased statesmen, on its first stamps.
Some countries used national symbols.

Nonportrait designs
became popular by the end of the 19th century, and stamps created to commemorate important events began to be issued.
Today almost all countries issue large, colorful pictorials, often solely for the revenue obtained from sale to collectors.
Portraits of presidents and others who have made significant contributions to American life have since been featured on U.S. stamps.
Portraits of living people, however, are forbidden—a person’s likeness cannot appear on a U.S. stamp until at least ten years have passed since his or her death.
The only exceptions are presidents, whose portraits may appear on stamps immediately after they die.

Postage stamps eventually took on a wide variety of special purposes.

Postage-due stamps
(or simply “dues,” as collectors call them)

were affixed to envelopes to indicate insufficient postage.

Special stamps for airmail
newspapers
military delivery
income tax
railway delivery
special handling
and all sorts of other purposes were created.

Semipostals, or charity stamps, became a popular way for governments to raise funds for various causes.
These stamps cost more than their postage value, with the difference going toward the charitable cause.

Stamps have historically shown a specified amount of prepaid postage.
But in recent years many stamps have been printed without denominations, the majority from the United States, which often prints huge quantities of one-ounce, first-class stamps in anticipation of a postage increase.
The exact amount of the increase is not known at the time the stamps are printed, so they are simply marked with a letter of the alphabet or some other designation to indicate they represent the going rate for a one-ounce letter.
The year of issue is commonly placed at the bottom of U.S. nondenominational stamps to avoid confusion.

The last major postage innovation of the 20th century was the development and wide distribution of self-adhesive stamps—stamps that do not have to be moistened.
Consumers love them for their convenience, but collectors hate them because they are difficult to store in a stamp album.
Eventually, the only “lickable” stamps will likely be those intended primarily for collectors and souvenir hunters, such as America’s enormously popular;

Elvis Presley stamps
James Dean stamps
Marilyn Monroe stamps

The 21st century is apt to bring major changes to the postal industry, due mostly to the growing use of e-mail and other electronic means of transmitting information.
As post offices become less and less important and postal revenues decline, stamps commemorating events and folk heroes will likely become more common as a means of increasing sales.

Stamp Act

Stamp Act, act introduced by the British prime minister George Grenville and passed by the British Parliament in 1765 as a means of raising revenue in the American colonies.


The Stamp Act required all legal documents, licenses, commercial contracts, newspapers, pamphlets, and playing cards to carry a tax stamp.


The act extended to the colonies the system of stamp duties then employed in Great Britain and was intended to raise money to defray the cost of maintaining the military defenses of the colonies.


Passed without debate, it aroused widespread opposition among the colonists, who argued that because they were not represented in Parliament, they could not legally be taxed without their consent.

Members of the Sons of Liberty, a patriotic secret society, were particularly active in opposing the imposition of the stamp tax, and they led a campaign of physical violence in which many official stamp agents were attacked by mobs and their property destroyed.


Resolutions of protest against the act were adopted by a number of the colonial assemblies. The Virginia House of Burgesses passed five such resolutions offered by the American patriot Patrick Henry.

Opposition culminated in the convening of the Stamp Act Congress to consider organized means of protesting against the tax. Colonial businessmen agreed to stop importing British goods until the act was repealed, and trade was substantially diminished.


Refusal to use the stamps on business papers became common, and the courts would not enforce their use on legal documents. Opposed by the British business community, the act was repealed by the British Parliament on March 4, 1766, after the members of the House of Commons heard the arguments of Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania's representative in London.


Repeal was accompanied by the Declaratory Act, which affirmed the right of the British government to pass acts legally binding on the colonists.


The unity of the American colonists in their opposition to the Stamp Act contributed substantially to the rise of American nationalist sentiment, and the conflict between the colonists and the British government over the Stamp Act is often considered one of the chief immediate causes of the American Revolution.

Sons of Liberty, secret patriotic society organized in the American colonies in 1765 to oppose the Stamp Act. After the act was repealed in 1766, the society, which consisted of numerous local chapters, formed Committees of Correspondence to foster resistance to oppressive British economic and political actions. The Sons of Liberty also helped enforce the policy of nonimportation, by which American merchants refused to import goods carried in British ships, and in 1774 it took part in convoking the Continental Congress. Its leaders included Samuel Adams and Paul Revere.

IBI STAMPS

In the United States, the introduction of Information Based Indicia (IBI) technology has allowed newer ways to sell stamps. IBI is an encrypted 2-dimensional bar code that makes counterfeiting more difficult and easier to detect, offering value beyond postage. Unlike traditional postage meter indicia, each IBI is unique. The IBI contains security critical data elements as well as other information, such as point of origin and the sender. The IBI is human and machine-readable.

Prior to IBI being introduced, postage vault devices were used on personal computers to allow postage stamps to be printed from one's computer. The postage vault device is a tamper resistant postal security device to disable postage equipment when tampered with. The postage vault can be also identified as the means to store (and keep track of) monetary funds in the postage vault. You can think of this as prepaying for the right to print postage from your personal computer. The Internet is used to reset or replenish funds in the postage vault.
In March 2001, the United States Postal Service authorized Neopost Online and NorthroP Grumman Corporation to test an innovative purchasing stamp system. This self-service stamp vending system allows the consumer to peruse through a variety of denominations and quantities, select the desired purchase and swipe his/her credit card to submit a purchase order. The stamp vending system then authorizes the purchase order, prints the stamp sheet(s) and finally dispenses them to the consumer. The ability to peruse, request, authorize, print, and dispense a stamp purchase using the Internet makes these the world's first browser-based stamps. This is the first instance where IBI was utilized on adhesive labels. The product from this self-service stamp vending system is aptly named by collectors as Neopost web-enabled stamps. These stamps were available from March 2001 through August 2003 and were denominated (fixed value) stamps.

In 2002 the United States Postal Service authorized Stamps.com to issue NetStamps. The NetStamps utilizes IBI technology and can be printed from personal computers with postal vaults. In 2004 the United States Postal Service introduced the Automated Postal Centers (APC). These kiosks provided non-denominated ($0.01 to $99.99) stamps. The intent of the APC is to reduce labor required to service consumers at the postal counters. Recently, personal pictures have been paired with IBI technology to provide a personalized stamp for the consumer. These stamps are custom made and require a period of time (days) to produce.
The push towards using IBI technology aids the United States Postal Service in finding new venues to sell stamps. It also reduces the burden of maintaining the mechanical machines to sell stamps. The United States Postal Service still relies on consigning stamps to retailers and banks (via automatic teller machines (ATMs). They must be the same size and thickness as currency in order to be dispensed by the ATM.

Similarly, Royal Mail in the United Kingdom has recently launched a "Print-your-own-postage" service allowing the general public to purchase IBI-style codes online, and print them onto address stickers or directly onto envelopes, in lieu of using First Class postage stamps. This was much remarked-upon in the press as the first time a consumer "stamp" has not featured an image of the reigning monarch. It joins the existing "SmartStamp" subscription service, which performs the same function but is primarily aimed at business customers.

Stamp and Stamps Collecting

STAMP & STAMPS COLLECTING

• Postage stamps are adhesive labels affixed to letters or parcels to indicate that a specified amount of postage has been prepaid for delivery. Stamps are usually issued by a government or an agency representing a government, such as a national post office. The collecting and study of postage stamps and related items such as postcards is known as philately, a word derived from Greek meaning, literally, “love of what is free of further tax.” Stamp collecting is one of the most popular hobbies in the world.

COLLECTING

• The hobby of collecting includes seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining whatever items are of interest to the individual collector. Some collectors are generalists, accumulating merchandise, or stamps from all countries of the world. Others focus on a subtopic within their area of interest, perhaps 19th century postage stamps, milk bottle labels from Sussex, or Mongolian harnesses and tack.

THE ITEMS COLLECTORS

• collect may be antique, or simply collectible. Antiques are collectible items at least 100 years old; collectibles are less than antique, and may even be new. Collectors and dealers may use the word vintage to describe older collectibles. Most collectibles are man-made commercial items, but some private collectors collect natural objects such as birds' eggs, butterflies, rocks, and seashells.

TYPES OF COLLECTING

• From the earliest years of the hobby, most philatelists have preferred to collect by country, specializing in the issues of one or more nations. Since about the mid-1950s, however, many philatelists have become interested in topical collecting, acquiring stamps illustrating certain themes or subjects. Among the wide range of pictorials are stamps devoted to sports, art and music, aviation, birds and flowers, literature, scouting, ships, and telecommunications

STAMPS

• The idea for the adhesive postage stamp was first suggested by the English schoolmaster and civil servant Rowland Hill as one of the many postal reforms in Britain in 1837. Hill's conception, for which he was later knighted, was derived from similar labels that had been issued almost a century earlier in many parts of Europe as a way of collecting a tax on newspapers. In a treatise on post office reform, Hill also suggested that mail be prepaid, that charges be based on weight instead of the number of pages being sent, and that the rates be low enough to allow ordinary citizens to mail letters.

DEVELOPMENT OF STAMPS

• Brazil became the second country to use adhesive postage stamps in 1843, and the United States was the third in 1847. By 1860 most nations had adopted the use of the postage stamp. Early designs imitated those of Britain. Monarchies and their territories issued stamps with portraits of their reigning king or queen. The United States depicted George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, two deceased statesmen, on its first stamps. Some countries used national symbols.
  Nonportrait designs became popular by the end of the 19th century, and stamps created to commemorate important events began to be issued. Today almost all countries issue large, colorful pictorials, often solely for the revenue obtained from sale to collectors. Portraits of presidents and others who have made significant contributions to American life have since been featured on U.S. stamps. Portraits of living people, however, are forbidden—a person’s likeness cannot appear on a U.S. stamp until at least ten years have passed since his or her death. The only exceptions are presidents, whose portraits may appear on stamps immediately after they die.

POSTAGE STAMPS

• eventually took on a wide variety of special purposes. Postage-due stamps (or simply “dues,” as collectors call them) were affixed to envelopes to indicate insufficient postage. Special stamps for airmail, newspapers, military delivery, income tax, railway delivery, special handling, and all sorts of other purposes were created. Semipostals, or charity stamps, became a popular way for governments to raise funds for various causes. These stamps cost more than their postage value, with the difference going toward the charitable cause.
• Stamps have historically shown a specified amount of prepaid postage. But in recent years many stamps have been printed without denominations, the majority from the United States, which often prints huge quantities of one-ounce, first-class stamps in anticipation of a postage increase. The exact amount of the increase is not known at the time the stamps are printed, so they are simply marked with a letter of the alphabet or some other designation to indicate they represent the going rate for a one-ounce letter. The year of issue is commonly placed at the bottom of U.S. nondenominational stamps to avoid confusion.

THE LAST MAJOR POSTAGE

• innovation of the 20th century was the development and wide distribution of self-adhesive stamps—stamps that do not have to be moistened. Consumers love them for their convenience, but collectors hate them because they are difficult to store in a stamp album. Eventually, the only “lickable” stamps will likely be those intended primarily for collectors and souvenir hunters, such as America’s enormously popular Elvis Presley, James Dean, and Marilyn Monroe stamps. The 21st century is apt to bring major changes to the postal industry, due mostly to the growing use of e-mail and other electronic means of transmitting information. As post offices become less and less important and postal revenues decline, stamps commemorating events and folk heroes will likely become more common as a means of increasing sales.

BEGINNING A COLLECTION

• Some novice collectors start purchasing items that appeal to them, and then slowly work at acquiring knowledge about how to build a collection. Others (more cautious or studious types) want to develop some background in the field before starting to buy items. The term antique generally refers to items which were made at least 100 years ago or more. In some fields, such as antique cars, the time frame is less stringent — 25 years or so being considered enough time to make a car a "classic" if not an antique. In the area of furniture, some experts claim that a true antique must be at least 150 years old.
  In general, then, items of significance, beauty, values or interest that are "too young" to be considered antiques, fall into the realm of collectibles. But not all collectibles are limited editions, and many of them have been around for decades: for example, the popular turn-of-the-century posters, Art Deco and Art Nouveau items, Carnival and Depression era glass, etc. In addition, there exists the "contemporary collectibles" category, featuring items like plates, figurines, bells, graphics, steins, and dolls.
  Many collectors enjoy making a plan for their collections, combining education, stimulation and experimentation to develop a personal collecting style. And even those who reject the notion of "planned collecting" can refine their "selection skills" with some background information on the how-to's of collecting.

COLLECTING PROCEDURES

• One of the attractions of stamp collecting is the ease of starting a collection. With access to enough incoming mail, especially from abroad, a person can build a collection without any expense. Literally tens of thousands of stamps, however, including many of the older issues, are priced very cheaply.
  Little special equipment is required. A collector needs only an album to house the collection, some hinges or other types of mounts to attach the stamps to the pages, and a pair of stamp tongs with which to handle them. Stamps and accessories can be purchased easily. Nearly every city has a one or more professional stamp dealers. Thousands of other dealers operate exclusively by mail or the Internet.
  Exchanging duplicate stamps is one of the greatest pleasures in philately. The best way to find trading partners is to join a school or other local stamp club.When collectors have accumulated a number of valuable stamps, they must take precautions for safe storage, preferably in a bank safety deposit box. If the stamps are in mint condition, they should not be overlapped; through changes in humidity, overlapping stamps may stick together and become seriously damaged. Collectors also should keep accurate written inventories of all their philatelic material.

OMNIBUS

• An omnibus issue is any group of stamps, generally with the same design, released by a number of stamp-issuing authorities to mark the same occasion. The British Commonwealth has by far produced the greatest number of omnibus issues, the first being the George V Silver Jubilee series of 1935, another being the series released on July 29, 1981, to commemorate the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Frances Spencer.

Collecting of Postage stamps

Stamp collecting is the collecting of postage stamps and related objects, such as covers, (envelopes or packages with stamps on them).It is one of the world's most popular hobbies, with estimates of the number of collectors ranging up to 20 million in the United States alone.

"STAMPS"

• 1. A device or instruments for stamping.
• 2.The impression or mark made by stamping or imprinting.
• 3. A distingtived character, indication, or mark.
• 4. The act of stamping.
• 5. A stamps or printed paper affixed in evidence that a Tax has been paid.

Test Stamps

A test stamp, dummy stamp, or training stamp, is a label resembling a postage stamp that is used by postal authorities for testing equipment and/or training postal workers. They generally have the same size and shape as regular stamps, but with a minimal design. Although not normally made available to the general public, some are in private hands, and it is a recognized stamp collecting specialty.In the United Kingdom test stamps for coil dispensing machines are sometimes known as poached eggs, because of their design. They are printed the same size and format as the definitives and perforated in the same manner. The amount of ink used is also the same as actual postage stamps, so that they can be used to test the machines with material as close as possible to the actual postage stamps. The colour of these test stamps was changed from green to black after 1937 when some test coils were accidentally left in a machine and used as half-penny stamps. At the time of this colour change, text was also added to the centre of the labels indicating their use.In Germany test stamps were used between 1915 and 1930 to show advertisers in stamp booklets what their advertisement would look like. Small series of booklets were produced with large coloured numbers instead of the stamps for this purpose. These booklets are now very rare.

Postage Stamp Gum

In philately, gum is the substance applied to the back of a postage stamp to enable it to adhere to a letter or other mailed item. The term is generic, and applies both to traditional types such as gum arabic and to synthetic modern formulations.
The use of gum was part of the original proposal by Rowland Hill, and has been universal from the beginning. There have been a number of stamp types that were issued ungummed, typically due to emergency situations when gum was not available, such as Italy in 1944, Kraków issue of Poland in 1919, Latvia in 1919. Other reasons have included lack of access to gum (the typewritten "Cowries" of 1895 Uganda), extreme tropical climate (1873 Curaçao and Suriname), and intent to sell only to collectors (as with the US "Farley's Follies" souvenir sheets of 1933). The manual gluing-on of postage is such an extreme consumption of time (and "time is money" to businesses with a lot of mail) that these situations are always temporary.
Originally, gumming took place after printing and before perforation, usually because the paper had to be damp for printing to work well, but in modern times most stamp printing is done dry on pregummed paper. There have been a couple of historical instances where stamps were regummed after being perforated, but these were unusual situations.
On early issues, gum was applied by hand, using a brush or roller, but in 1880 De La Rue came up with a machine gumming process using a printing press, and gum is now always applied by machine. The gum is universally spread as uniformly as possible, but a 1946 local issue by the town of Finsterwalde in Germany used an economy process where the back of the stamp had a regular pattern of circular bare patches.
The greatest manufacturing problem of the gumming process is its tendency to make the stamps curl, due to the different reaction of paper and gum to varying moisture levels. In the most extreme cases, the stamp will spontaneously roll up into a small tube. Various schemes have been tried, but the problem persists to this day. In Swiss stamps of the 1930s, Courvoisier used a gum-breaking machine that pressed a pattern of small squares into the gum, resulting in so-called grilled gum. Another scheme has been to slice the gum with knives after it has been applied. In some cases the gum solves the problem itself by becoming "crackly" when it dries.

Semi-postal design

A semi-postal stamp or semipostal stamp is a postage stamp issued to raise money for some purpose (such as a charitable cause) and thus sold over and above the cost of postage. Typically the stamp shows two denominations separated by a plus sign, but in many cases the only denomination shown is for the postage rate, and the postal customer simply pays the higher price when purchasing the stamps.

The first semi-postal was actually a postal card; to commemorate the Uniform Penny Post in 1890, the United Kingdom issued a card with a face value of one penny, but sold it for sixpence, with the difference given to a fund for postal workers. The first semi-postal stamps were issued by the Australian colonies of New South Wales and Victoria, who both marked the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897 with stamps denominated in pennies, but sold for shillings, a 12x increase over the face value.

Semi-postals became widespread in European countries at the beginning of the 20th century. In many cases they have become standard annual issues, such as the pro juventute series of Switzerland started in 1913. Many countries issued semi-postal stamps to raise money for the Red Cross in World War I. The surcharges are typically a fraction of the face value; at one points the Fédération Internationale de Philatélie was officially boycotting stamps with surcharges greater than 50 percent of face value, saying that such issues were exploitive of stamp collectors.

By contrast, the United States is a relative newcomer to semi-postals, with its first semi-postal being the breast cancer research stamp issued in July 1998. Several more have been issued since then.

Reproducible mark

Ancient Seal Seals and stamps have been used to close agreements, record transactions, and authorize documents for thousands of years. One of the earliest forms of printing, seals consisted of a raised or carved design in a rock that was pressed into wet clay or wax to create a distinctive and reproducible mark.

Sealing wax in a letter, Fonseca Padilla Family Coat of Arms, Jalisco, México.

Present-day impression of a Late Bronze Age seal

Armigerous signet ring

Signet rings, generally bearing a coat of arms

Portrait of the reigning King or Queen (Stamps)

Brazil became the second country to use adhesive postage stamps in 1843, and the United States was the third in 1847. By 1860 most nations had adopted the use of the postage stamp. Early designs imitated those of Britain. Monarchies and their territories issued stamps with portraits of their reigning king or queen. The United States depicted George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, two deceased statesmen, on its first stamps. Some countries used national symbols.
Nonportrait designs became popular by the end of the 19th century, and stamps created to commemorate important events began to be issued.

Today almost all countries issue large, colorful pictorials, often solely for the revenue obtained from sale to collectors. Portraits of presidents and others who have made significant contributions to American life have since been featured on U.S. stamps. Portraits of living people, however, are forbidden—a person’s likeness cannot appear on a U.S. stamp until at least ten years have passed since his or her death. The only exceptions are presidents, whose portraits may appear on stamps immediately after they die.

Postage stamps eventually took on a wide variety of special purposes. Postage-due stamps (or simply “dues,” as collectors call them) were affixed to envelopes to indicate insufficient postage. Special stamps for airmail, newspapers, military delivery, income tax, railway delivery, special handling, and all sorts of other purposes were created. Semipostals, or charity stamps, became a popular way for governments to raise funds for various causes. These stamps cost more than their postage value, with the difference going toward the charitable cause.

Stamps have historically shown a specified amount of prepaid postage. But in recent years many stamps have been printed without denominations, the majority from the United States, which often prints huge quantities of one-ounce, first-class stamps in anticipation of a postage increase. The exact amount of the increase is not known at the time the stamps are printed, so they are simply marked with a letter of the alphabet or some other designation to indicate they represent the going rate for a one-ounce letter. The year of issue is commonly placed at the bottom of U.S. nondenominational stamps to avoid confusion.

The last major postage innovation of the 20th century was the development and wide distribution of self-adhesive stamps—stamps that do not have to be moistened. Consumers love them for their convenience, but collectors hate them because they are difficult to store in a stamp album. Eventually, the only “lickable” stamps will likely be those intended primarily for collectors and souvenir hunters, such as America’s enormously popular Elvis Presley, James Dean, and Marilyn Monroe stamps. The 21st century is apt to bring major changes to the postal industry, due mostly to the growing use of e-mail and other electronic means of transmitting information. As post offices become less and less important and postal revenues decline, stamps commemorating events and folk heroes will likely become more common as a means of increasing sales.

New York,Dublin,Oxford,Japan,Hongkong

Small-town Post office Aurora, New York

General Post office, Dublin
The Main Post office in Oxford
Post office , Kanazawa Japan
The Old Wan Chai Post office, Hongkong

A post office is a facility authorized by a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail. Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies. In addition, some post offices offer non-postal services such as passport applications and other government forms, money orders, and banking services.
The back rooms of a post office are where mail is processed for delivery. Mail may also be processed in other post offices that are not open to the general public.">

Stamps United states of America

Province of Afghanistan

Earliest Oil Paintings Feb. 19, 2008 -- The oldest known oil painting, dating from 650 A.D., has been found in caves in Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley, according to a team of Japanese, European and U.S. scientists.

The discovery reverses a common perception that the oil painting, considered a typically Western art, originated in Europe, where the earliest examples date to the early 12th century A.D.

Famous for its 1,500-year-old massive Buddha statues, which were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, the Bamiyan Valley features several caves painted with Buddhist images.

Damaged by the severe natural environment and Taliban dynamite, the cave murals have been restored and studied by the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in Tokyo, as a UNESCO/Japanese Fund-in-Trust project.

"Since most of the paintings have been lost, looted or deteriorated, we are trying to conserve the intact portions and also try to understand the constituent materials and painting techniques,"

Yoko Taniguchi, a researcher at the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in Tokyo, told Discovery News.

"It was during such analysis that we discovered oily and resinous components in a group of wall paintings."

Painted in the mid-7th century A.D., the murals have varying artistic influences and show scenes with knotty-haired Buddhas in vermilion robes sitting cross-legged amid palm leaves and mythical creatures.

Most likely, the paintings are the work of artists who traveled on the Silk Road, the ancient trade route between China, across Central Asia's desert to the West.

The researchers analyzed, with different methods, hundreds of samples. Three different centers -- Tokyo's National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France and the Los Angeles-based Getty Conservation Institute -- carried out the tests.

Infrared microscope, micro X-ray diffraction, and micro X-ray fluorescence produced accurate chemical images of the paintings. Gas chromatography confirmed and refined the identification of organic compounds.

"We discovered that a particular group of caves were painted with oil painting technique, using perhaps walnut and poppy seed drying oils. They also have multi-layered structure as if they were like canvas paintings of Medieval period," Taniguchi said.

Synchrotron beam analysis made it possible to identify the compounds used in the different layers of painting.

"These layers are very thin, and it was really important to analyze each of them selectively. Indeed, the paintings are done with a mixture of several ingredients. They are never present as a pure compound," Marine Cotte, a researcher at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, told Discovery News.

Analysis showed the layers were made up of natural resins, proteins, gums, oil-based paint layers and, in some cases, a resinous, varnish-like


Multi-Layered

"It is amazing how the ancient people knew the nature of materials well, such as protein, gum, resin, oil, pigments and dyes, and also how to prepare and combine them effectively,"
Hidemi Otake, a painting conservator at the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties of Japan, told Discovery News.

Murals in many of the Bamiyan caves featured various painting materials and techniques that had been employed through the ages.

"Some caves have rough wall surfaces and matte finishes, and others have very smooth surface, and some have a transparency and shininess. Some paintings have glaze-like layers on top of paint," Otake said.

According to top Afghan archaeologist Zemaryalai Tarzi, president of the Association for the Protection of Afghan Archaeology, the discovery is important as it testifies Afghanistan's rich cultural heritage.

"My Japanese colleagues are conducting scientific research and an inventory of these fragments with courage and perseverance. But the discovery is yet not as important or significant as what the murals of Bamiyan used to be before their disappearance and destruction,".

Tarzi was Afghanistan's director general of archaeology and preservation of historical monuments until 1979, when he was forced to flee the country a few months before the Soviet invasion. He believes further research is necessary to establish the possible role of India and China in developing the technique.

"It would be very important to know if one can attribute this invention to Bamiyan alone," Tarzi said.
source: Discovery channel News

Postage Stamps

Postage stamp design is the activity of graphic design as applied to postage stamps. Many thousands of designs have been created since a profile bust of Queen Victoria was adopted for the Penny Black in 1840; some considered very successful, others less so.

A stamp design includes several elements required for it to accomplish its purpose satisfactorily. Most important is the denomination indicating its monetary value, while international agreements require a country name on almost all types of stamps. A graphic design is very nearly universal; in addition to making counterfeits harder to produce and aiding clerks in quick recognition of appropriate postage, postal customers simply expect stamps to carry a design.

This 2005 stamp of the Faroe Islands is a typical example of modern stamp design: minimal text, intense color, artistic rendering of a country-specific subject.(photo)

source: wikipedia encyclopedia

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Denominion

The fundamental purpose of a stamp is to indicate the prepayment of postage. Since different kinds and sizes of mail normally pay different amounts of postage, the stamps need to carry a value. In a very few cases, the denomination has been omitted; for instance, during the tumults of 1949 China, undenominated stamps were issued, so as to allow the price of a stamp to fluctuate on a daily basis depending on the value of the gold yuan.

The usual form of the denomination is a number, optionally preceded or followed by a currency symbol.
A prominent denomination on a 1949 stamp of China.(photo)

Country Name

This 1924 stamp of Ubangi-Shari includes no less than four country names: Republique Francaise and Moyen Congo (Middle Congo) on the base stamp, Afrique Equatoriale Francaise and Oubangui-Chari as overprints.
The second required element, at least for stamps intended to be used on international mail, is the name of the country. The first postage stamps, those of the United Kingdom, had no need for a name, and by agreement the UK remains the only country not required to name itself on its stamps. For all other UPU members, the name must appear in Latin letters. Many countries using non-Latin alphabets used only those on their early stamps, and they remain difficult for most collectors to identify today.

Graphic Design

The first of many profiles of Queen Victoria

The graphic element of a stamp design falls into one of four major categories:
1. Portrait bust - profile or full-face
2. Emblem - coat of arms, flag, national symbol, posthorn, etc

3. Numeric - a design built around the numeral of value 4. Pictorial

Textual Elements

Textual elements written in a variety of scripts on a stamp of Israel.

Nearly all stamps have some amount of text embedded in their design. In addition to the expected denomination and country name, textual elements may include a statement of purpose ("postage", "official mail", etc), a plate number, the name of a person being portrayed, the occasion being commemorated, the year of stamp issue, and national mottoes.
Occasionally designs use text as their primary design element; for instance, a series of US stamps from the 1970s featured quotations from the United States Declaration of Independence. In general however, text has come to be used more sparingly in recent years.

Hidden Elements and "secret marks"

Sometimes designers include tiny elements into a design, sometimes at the request of the stamp-issuing authority, sometimes on their own. Stamps may have a year or name worked into a design, while the US stamp honoring Rabbi Bernard Revel has a minute Star of David visible in his beard.
Secret marks are small design alterations added to distinguish printings unambiguously. These usually take the form of small lines or marks added to clear areas of a design. Chinese stamps of the 1940s have secret marks in the form of slightly altered characters, where two arms might be changed to touch, when previously they were separate.

Shape and Size

Postage stamps of various shapes and sizes, from Italy, Yemen Arab Republic, France, and Hungary.
The usual shape of a postage stamp is a rectangle, this being an efficient way to pack stamps on a sheet. A rectangle wider than tall is called a "horizontal design", while taller than wide is a "vertical design".
A number of additional shapes have been used, including triangles, rhombuses, octagons, circles, and various freeform shapes including heart shapes, and even a banana shaped stamp issued by Tonga from 1969 to 1985.
The usual size ranges from 10-30 mm in each direction, experience having shown this to be the easiest to handle. Many countries use only a limited selection of dimensions, to simplify automated machinery that handles stamps.
The smallest postage stamp on record was issued by Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1856, and was a square, with sides measuring 10 millimeters.
The biggest stamps in history were used in the USA from 1865 and measured 52 by 95 millimeters, but were used exclusively for mailing newspapers.

Design Evolution

Stamp design has undergone a gradual process of evolution, traceable both to advances in printing technology and general changes in taste. Design "fads" may also be observed, where a number of countries tend to imitate each other. This may be driven by printing houses, many of which design and print stamps for multiple countries.

Design Process

This classic Art Nouveau design of 1900s France and her colonies continued in use into the 1920s.

Once a general subject has been chosen, the postal administration typically contracts an outside artist to produce a design.
In working up a design, the artist must take into account the rules and constraints as mentioned above, and perhaps additional requirements, such as membership in a series of related designs.

In addition, the artist must consider the consequence of working on a small "canvas"; for instance, traditional paintings often reduce into an amorphous blur, and so the stamp designer will opt to pick a single interesting and/or characteristic detail as the center of the design. Similarly, a stamp consisting of simply a portrait will mean little to many users, and the artist may opt to include a visual element suggesting the person's accomplishments, such as an architect's most famous building, or simply add the word "architect" somewhere in the design.

The artist then submits one or more designs for the postal administration's approval. The accepted design may undergo several rounds of modification before entering the production process. The design may also be abandoned, perhaps if circumstances have changed, such as a change of government.

A Postage stamp design and error

This Philippine stamp of 1932 is captioned Pagsanjan Falls, but actually depicts Vernal Fall; compare the photo below.

A postage stamp design error is a mistake made during the design phase of the postage stamp production process. Design errors most commonly occur as minor mistakes, such as a missing letter in the binomial name of an organism depicted on the stamp, but some have been major gaffes, such as a map appearing to lay claim to another country's territory, or the depiction of the wrong person on the stamp.

Design successes and failure

In the end, successful stamp designs receive relatively little notice from the general public, but considerable praise from the philatelic press. On the other side, design errors regularly get through the multiple stages of review and checking. Errors have ranged from minute points of rendition (such as the subtly-reversed ears on an Austrian stamp of the 1930s), to misrepresentations of disputed territory in maps, to mistaken text.

Another category of failure includes designs that are simply rejected by the stamp-buying public. The 1970s-era anti-alcoholism stamp of the US is a well-known example; it consists merely of the slogan "Alcoholism: You Can Beat It!", which must have looked good during the design process, but affixed to the corner of an envelope it suggests that the recipient is an alcoholic in need of public encouragement, and few people ever used this stamp on their mail.

Starting to collect the stamps

Collecting Procedures
One of the attractions of stamp collecting is the ease of starting a collection. With access to enough incoming mail, especially from abroad, a person can build a collection without any expense. Literally tens of thousands of stamps, however, including many of the older issues, are priced very cheaply.

Little special equipment is required. A collector needs only an album to house the collection, some hinges or other types of mounts to attach the stamps to the pages, and a pair of stamp tongs with which to handle them. Stamps and accessories can be purchased easily. Nearly every city has a one or more professional stamp dealers. Thousands of other dealers operate exclusively by mail or the Internet.

Exchanging duplicate stamps is one of the greatest pleasures in philately. The best way to find trading partners is to join a school or other local stamp club.
further reading These sources provide additional information on Stamps and Stamp Collecting.
When collectors have accumulated a number of valuable stamps, they must take precautions for safe storage, preferably in a bank safety deposit box. If the stamps are in mint condition, they should not be overlapped; through changes in humidity, overlapping stamps may stick together and become seriously damaged. Collectors also should keep accurate written inventories of all their philatelic material.
source: encarta encyclopedia.

Preparations

1. stamps album or a school binder
2. Stamps tongs
3. Stamps hinges
4. Glassine envelopes
5. Magnifying glass
6. Perforation gauge
7. Watermark detector
8. Stamps catalogue

Type of collections

1. Serious stamps collecting
2. topical stamps collecting
3. Nation's postage stamps collecting
4. Collecting only First day cover
5. Collecting only Commemorative stamps
6. Collecting only certain kinds of stamps

Ancients time Coins

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The question of the world's first coin has long been and still is debated. Among numismatists, it is debated whether the world's first coins originated in Lydia, China, or India (where coins were known as karshapana). One early coin from Caria, Asia Minor, includes a legend "I am the badge of Phanes," though most of the early Lydian pieces have no writing on them, just symbolic animals. Therefore the dating of these coins relies primarily on archeological evidence, with the most commonly cited evidence coming from excavations at the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos, also called the Ephesian Artemision (which would later evolve into one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world). Many early Lydian coins were undoubtedly struck (manufactured) under the authority of private individuals and are thus more akin to tokens than true coins, though because of their numbers it's evident that some were official state issues, with King Alyattes of Lydia being the most frequently mentioned originator of coinage.
______________________________________________________ A 640 BC. onethird stater coins from Lydia

______________________________________________________ British Fifty pence coin

Ancient Greek coin

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Karttiketa and Lakshmi coin (Avanti, Ujjain, circa 150-75 BC

Envelope with Special commemorative postmark

On the first day of issue a set of stamps can be purchased attached to an envelope that has been postmarked with a special commemorative postmark. Known as a "First Day Cover", it can also be assembled from the component parts by stamp collectors, who are the most frequent users. These envelopes usually bear a commemorative cachet of the subject for which the stamp was created.

War on terror is Pakistan's own war

Pakistan is fighting al qaeda and the Taliban for its own interest, Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani said on Saturday as he embarked on his first officialvisit to the United States.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani speaks during a televised address to the nation on... see.-- Pakistan

Plate number coil

A plate number coil (PNC) is a United States postage stamp with the number of the printing plate or plates printed on it. The plate number typically appears as one or more small digits in the margin at the bottom of the stamp. The plate number may be centered or, on some coil issues, located toward the right. Although most plate numbers are composed of just numbers, both a combination of letter and number may be used. In the case when a letter is represented in the plate number, an upper case letter usually appears at the beginning or at the end of the sequence with the former serving as a good identifier of the stamp printer.
The plate number is on one stamp out of the number of stamps printed by a single revolution of rotary printing press used to print the stamps.

Postage stamp booklet

A postage stamp booklet is a set of one or more small panes of postage stamps, usually totalling about 10–20 stamps, folded over and placed in a cardboard cover. Smaller and easier to handle than a whole sheet of stamps, in many countries booklets have become a favored way to purchase stamps.