__1840: __Britain starts using adhesive postage stamps, with the "penny black" stamp allowing prepayment of postage at a fixed — and low — rate. The idea will stick.

King Henry I of England started a system of royal messengers in the 12th century, and subsequent monarchs improved and expanded the service. Henry VIII formally established the Royal Mail in 1516, but it was not until 1635 that Charles I made the service available to the public.

It was possible to prepay postage, but mostly it was the recipient's responsibility to pay the fees. If the recipient refused to accept delivery, the Royal Mail couldn't collect, and it lost plenty of revenue that way. Railroads were spreading across Britain in the 1830s and '40s, which made a rapid national mail service both possible and, because of the increased commerce in goods, necessary.

A reformer named Rowland Hill started campaigning in 1837 for a cheap, pay-in-advance system that would make the mails available to everyone and help British commerce in the bargain. He proposed the rate of one penny (about 40 cents in current U.S. money). Proof of payment would either be prepaid stationery or a label printed on "a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, and covered at the back with a glutinous wash." In other words, an adhesive postage stamp.

Parliament passed a postal reform bill in 1839, and Hill became an adviser to the Treasury, which supervised the financial operations of the Royal Mail. A national contest to design the first stamps drew thousands of entries.

The ultimate design was the penny black stamp, good for use throughout Britain on May 6 of the following year. The tuppence blue stamp, for letters weighing more than the standard half-ounce, debuted a few days later.

They both featured a portrait of Queen Victoria, then at the start of a six-decade reign. All subsequent British stamps have shown the head of the reigning monarch, either as the main subject or as a smaller reverse or relief design.

The stamps came in sheets of 240, corresponding to the number of pence in a pound sterling in the pre-1971 pound-shilling-pence currency system. The Royal Mail replaced the penny black with penny red stamps in 1841, largely because the black stamps were too easy to counterfeit, and the black ink hid postmarks, so people could — and did— reuse canceled stamps. Postal customers had to cut the sheets with scissors or knives, because the Royal Mail didn't start issuing sheets with perforations until 1854.

The stamps were an instant success. Postal traffic doubled in the first year and quadrupled by 1850. The system was widely copied and spread to more than 150 countries by 1880.

Some accounts say the idea, if not the reality, of adhesive postage stamps originated earlier in Austria, Sweden or maybe Greece. But British stamps, to this day, are the only ones in the world that need not name the country of origin: The monarch's head suffices.

Source: Various

See Also:

May 6, 1937: A Ball of Fire und Alles Ist Kaput

June 20, 1840: A Simple Matter of Dots and Dashes

Feb. 5, 1840: Rat-a-tat-tat

June 8, 1959: They`ll Never Complain About Slow Postal Service Again

Feb. 20, 1792: U.S. Goes Postal, but It’s All Good