National Postal Museum

National Postal Museum, museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., that explores the history of the United States postal service and celebrates the art of letter writing and the beauty and lore of postage stamps. The museum is home to the National Philatelic Collection, the nation’s largest and most comprehensive collection of stamps, postmarks, and related materials.


The museum opened in 1993 in the historic City Post Office Building, designed by Daniel Burnham and built in 1914. Exhibitions trace postal history as a reflection of the nation’s industrial, technological, and social progress.

The museum follows the development of national mail service, beginning with the American colonial era, when postal routes followed trails used by Native Americans. Exhibits also describe the operations of the Pony Express, the effect of urbanization and rural life on delivery systems, the importance of letters as windows on history, and the intriguing stories behind stamps and stamp design. The museum displays a rotating selection of more than 55,000 stamps.

For philatelic researchers, the museum offers a wealth of material, including certified plate proofs of stamps printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It also has a master collection of U.S. postage stamps dating to 1847, and a large collection of revenue stamps, which are issued as proof of payment for special government taxes.

The museum’s library, a center for postal history and philatelic research, is among the largest of its kind in the world.

Stamps the Making

Engraving and Printing
Bureau of, agency of the U.S. Treasury Department, established by the Appropriation Act of 1869. Actual printing of currency notes by Treasury employees began in 1863.
The bureau designs, engraves, and prints U.S. paper currency; Treasury bonds, bills, notes, and certificates of indebtedness; U.S. postage, customs, and revenue stamps; and engraved items for the various departments and agencies of the federal government.

All U.S. currency notes are printed from plates made from hand-tooled steel engravings; this type of printing is known as intaglio, the most difficult process to produce and to counterfeit. Annually, paper currency with a face value of more than $35 billion is printed, averaging about 16 million notes a day.
The bureau began producing U.S. postage stamps in 1894; previously the work had been done by private firms under government contract.

Watermark
Watermark, term for a figure or design incorporated into paper during its manufacture and appearing lighter than the rest of the sheet when viewed in transmitted light. Watermarks first appeared on papers produced in Italy around 1270, less than 100 years after the art of papermaking was introduced to Europe by Muslims from the Middle East.

The watermark was made when the semifluid paper pulp (mixture of cotton or other fibers) was being drained on a grid of laid (warp) and chain (woof) wires. Fine wires forming the desired design were tied on top of the grid and impressed into the pulp. This impression made the paper thinner, and therefore, more transparent, where it appeared.

Early in the 19th century, papermakers began to solder the watermark wires to the grid frame, thus insuring uniformity of impression and aiding in the detection of counterfeiting and forgery. The first British postage stamps of 1840 bore a watermark, but stamps of the United States were not so marked until 1895. When paper began to be machine-made, the watermark wiring was simply transferred to the grid cover of the dandy roll, a turning cylinder that passed over the paper.

Postal history of India

Postal System History

The history of India's postal system begins long before the introduction of postage stamps.

The antecedents have been traced to the systems of the Persian Empire instituted by Cyrus the Great and Darius I for communicating important military and political information.

The Atharvaveda records a messenger service. Systems for collecting information and revenue data from the provinces are mentioned in Chanakya's Arthashastra (ca. 3rd century BC).
In ancient times the kings, emperors, rulers, zamindars or the feudal lords protected their land through the intelligence services of specially trained police or military agencies and courier services to convey and obtain information through runners, messengers and even through pigeons.

The chief of the secret service, known as the postmaster, maintained the lines of communication ... The people used to send letters to [their] distant relatives through their friends or neighbors.

For centuries it was rare for messages to be carried by any means other than a relay of runners on foot. A runner ran from one village or relay post to the next, carrying the letters on a pole with a sharp point.

His was a dangerous occupation: the relay of postal runners worked throughout the day and night, vulnerable to attacks by bandits and wild animals.

These mail runners were used chiefly by the rulers, for purposes of information and wartime news. They were subsequently used by merchants for trade purpose. It was much later that mail runners came to be in use for the carriage of private mail.

The postal history of India primarily began with the overland routes, stretching from Persia to India. What began as mere foot-tracks that more than often included fords across the mountaneous streams, gradually evolved over the centuries as highways, used by traders and military envoys on foot and horses, for carriage of missives.

The Arab influence of the Caliphate came about with the conquest of Sind by Muhammad bin Qasim in 712 A.D. Thereupon, the Diwan-i-Barid or Department of Posts established official communication across the far-flung empire. The swiftness of the horse messengers finds mention in many of the chronicles of that period.

The first Sultan of Delhi, Qutb-ud-din Aybak (Persian: قطب الدین ایبک) was Sultan for only four years, 1206 - 1210, but he founded the Mamluk Dynasty and created a messenger post system. This was expanded into the dak chowkis, a horse and foot runner service, by Alauddin Khilji in 1296.

Sher Shah Suri (1541-1545) replaced runners with horses for conveyance of messages along the northern high road, today known as the Grand Trunk Road, which he constructed between Bengal and Sindh over an ancient trade route at the base of the Himalayas, the Uttarapatha.

After 1793, when Cornwallis introduced the Regulation of the Permanent Settlement, the financial responsibility for maintaining the official posts rested with the zamindars. Alongside these, private dawk mail systems sprang up for the commercial conveyance of messages using hired runners. Also, the East India Company created its own infrastructure for the expansion and administration of military and commercial power.

The runners were paid according to the distance they travelled and the weight of their letters.
The Post Office Act XVII of 1837 provided that the Governor-General of India in Council had the exclusive right of conveying letters by post for hire within the territories of the East India Company.

The mails were available to certain officials without charge, which became a controversial privilege as the years passed. On this basis the Indian Post Office was established on October 1, 1837.

British India had hundreds of Princely States, some 652 in all, but most of them did not issue postage stamps. The stamp-issuing States were of two kinds: the Convention States and the Feudatory States. The postage stamps and postal histories of these States provide great challenges and many rewards to the patient philatelist. Many rarities are to be found here. Although handbooks are available, much remains to be discovered.

Postal history of Indian states

" Orchha 19142 annas red brown "

The Convention States are those which had postal conventions (or agreements) with the Post Office of India to provide postal services within their territories.

The adhesive stamps and postal stationery of British India were overprinted for use within each Convention State.

The first Convention State was Patiala, in 1884, followed by others in 1885. The stamps of the Convention States all became invalid 1 January 1950.

Reference: Charles Stewart-Wilson, British Indian Adhesive Stamps (Queen's Head) Surcharged for Native States,

rev. ed. with B.G. Jones (1904)

The Feudatory States maintained their own postal services within their territories and issued stamps with their own designs.

Many of the stamps were imperforate and without gum, as issued. Many varieties of type, paper, inks and dies are not listed in the standard catalogs.

The stamps of each Feudatory State were valid only within that State, so letters sent outside that State needed additional British India postage.

Reference: David Heppell, Modern Indian States postage stamp forgeries