A Video For The Non Philatelist

For more than 180 years, the Penny Black has been celebrated as the world's first postage stamp. Yet the real revolution was not the stamp itself, but the transformation of communication that made letter writing affordable for ordinary people.

https://www.rfrajola.com/MOTM/Masterpieces1.mp4

This short video, created from Chapter 1 of Masterpieces of the Mail (books now at printer), traces the birth of prepaid postage in Great Britain from the first imprimaturs of April 1840 through the rapid expansion of adhesive stamps to domestic and international mail. Using some of the most important surviving postal artifacts of the period, it explores how postal reform changed the way people communicated and established the model that much of the world would follow.

I hope you enjoy this introduction to one of the most significant developments in postal history.