Stamp

In early 1834, an Irish named James Chalmers invented the postage stamp. However Rowland Hill, a British, was generally thought to be the original inventor of stamps.

One day in 1840, Sir Rowland Hill was walking in the countryside when suddenly he heard people quarrelling. He went forward and found that a postman was arguing with a country girl on postage fees. The postman told Hill that he had walked a long way to send the letter to the girl, but the girl returned the letter to him after having a look at the envelope and said I do not have money to receive this letter.

Hill paid the postage fee to the postman. The girl was very grateful to Hill and told him that her fiance was working at another place and that letter was sent by him. They were very poor and therefore could not afford tp pay the postage fee. Both the country girl and her fiance had an agreement before he left that he woukd send her an envelope with the drawing of two circles to indicate that he was safe and welt.

At the time, postage fees were paid by the recipient of the letter. The incident with the country girl made Rowland Hill think deeply  of a postage fee procedure. He then proposed to the British Government to abolish the separation of letter and postage fee. He suggested instead that the sender should pay for the postage fee, in which a stamp would be attached to the envelope to pove that the postage fee was paid. The British Goverment accepted the said recommendation.

On 6 May 1840, Britain issued the first batch  of stamps. The stamps came in two forms; one with the picture of the Queen of Britain with a value of one penny, also know as the black penny and other called the blue penny with a value of two pence. These were the world’s first stamps. Hill was not the inventor of stamps, but the idea of how to use stamps came from him. This is why people thought of Rowland Hill as the inventor of stamps and named him the father of stamps.

Food for Thought :

It great effort is given in solving a problem, one will arrive at unexpected and creative solutions.

Short Stories on Discoveries, Inventions, Innovation & Creativity

AAET and UTAR, 2015

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