Britain issues the Penny Black on May…
May 1840 CE
The world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system, it will become valid for the pre-payment of postage from May 6.
It features a profile of Queen Victoria.
British postal rates were high, complex and anomalous in 1837, when Sir Rowland Hill, to simplify matters, proposed an adhesive stamp to indicate pre-payment of postage.
The recipient normally pays postage on delivery, charged by the sheet and on distance traveled.
By contrast, the Penny Black allows letters of up to one half-ounce (fourteen grams) to be delivered at a flat rate of one penny, regardless of distance.
Postal delivery systems using what may have been adhesive stamps existed before the Penny Black.
The idea had at least been suggested earlier in the Austrian Empire, Sweden, and possibly Greece.
Initially, Hill had pecified that the stamps should be three quarter inches inch square, but altered the dimensions to three-quarter inches wide by seven eights of an inch tall (approximately nineteen by twenty-two millimeters) to accommodate the writing at the bottom.
The word "POSTAGE" at the top of the design distinguishes it from a revenue stamp, which had long been used in the UK; "ONE PENNY." at the bottom shows the amount pre-paid for postage of the stamped letter. The background to the portrait consists of finely engraved engine turnings.
The two upper corners hold Maltese crosses with radiant solar discs at their centres; the lower corner letters show the position of the stamp in the printed sheet, from "A A" at top left to "T L" at bottom right.
The sheets, printed by Perkins Bacon, consist of two hundred and forty stamps in twenty rows of twelve columns.
One full sheet costs two hundred and forty pence or one pound; one row of twelve stamps costs a shilling.
As the name suggests, the stamp is printed in black ink.
A two penny stamp printed in blue and covering the double-letter rate (up to one ounce or twenty-eight grams) is issued on May 8, 1840.
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First world postal stamp ever issued : the Penny Black, Great Britain, issued May 1, 1840.
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