Who invented postcards

The travelling Teuton seems to regard it as a solemn duty to distribute them from each stage of his journey, as if he were a runner in a paper chase. His first care on reaching some place of note is to lay in a stock, and alternate the sipping of beer with the addressing of postcards.

Sometimes he may be seen conscientiously devoting to this task the hours of a railway journey. Some of these cards, by the way, are of enormous size; and anyone who is favoured with them by foreign correspondents is subjected to a heavy fine by the inland postal authorities, who are not content with delivering them in a torn and crumpled state. In , the British Post Office allowed messages to be written on one half of the side normally reserved for the address, paving the way for the divided back era of postcards.

This left the reverse side of the card free to be completely filled with an image. However, these postcards could not be sent abroad until other Universal Postal Union members agreed to do the same. An American of German descent, Curt Teich started a publishing company in Chicago in focused on newspaper and magazine printing. A few years later, in , Curt Teich Co. Curt Teich was an early pioneer of the offset printing process, and the first to understand the advantages of using lightly embossed paper to speed up the drying of ink, allowing the finished product to retain brighter colors.

Because of their texture resembling linen, these embossed postcards became known as linen cards. He is best known for the Greetings From postcards with large letters , having successfully adapted the idea of the earlier Gruss Aus cards to the US audience. Dail, a salesman from Michigan, invented the revolving postcard rack.

The metal contraption could be placed in a counter and allowed customers to view and select postcards for themselves. Starting in and well into the s, postcards featuring a white border became commonplace in the US. Typically, multiple postcards were printed in rows on a large sheet of paper, which had to be trimmed around the edges of each postcard — a job that required a great deal of precision.

The white borders were introduced to give some margin of error to the process, thus making them less expensive to produce. A maxicard consists of picture postcard with a postage stamp and a cancellation mark affixed on the picture side of the card.

The themes of all these three elements should match in terms of motives, time and location, so that they are in "maximum concordance". On July 14, Postcrossing was launched!

So he coded a website on his free time with the goal of connecting him with other people who also enjoyed sending and receiving postcards. What started as a small side project quickly became a worldwide hobby, shared by many postcard enthusiasts. To date, over 57 million postcards have been exchanged through the platform, with thousands more on the way.

On the th anniversary of the postcard, Postcrossing organized a worldwide campaign to celebrate the special ocasion. A postcard contest received thousands of submissions from all over the world sharing their enthusiasm for postcards, filled with kind and thoughtful messages. A selection of some of the best postcards was showcased during October in an exhibition at the Universal Postal Union headquarters in Bern, Switzerland. More details of the exhibition can be found on Postcrossing's blog.

Many postal operators, museums, libraries and even schools joined the celebrations with postcard related events and initiatives. Some of the events were: 58 meetups 11 postcard exhibitions 8 special cancellation marks 8 workshops 6 seminars 4 commemorative postcards issued by post offices 3 guided tours 2 postage stamps. After a successful celebration in of the th anniversary of the postcard, Postcrossing , with the help of Finepaper , decided to launch the World Postcard Day on every October 1st — a day to celebrate the postcard and the connections it brings.

In the midst of a very unusual year, the special day was nonetheless comemorated all over the world, with the issue of comemorative postcards, dedicated cancellation marks, events in schools, philately fairs, libraries, museums, discounts at post offices and, above all, many many postcards. Back to top. Learn more Already that year, Theodore Hook Esq, a British writer, mailed himself a caricature of post office workers , shown to be writing mail in order to sell more stamps.

Learn more The earliest record of Lipman card's being used is from October 25, , sent from Richmond, Indiana. Learn more Despite this setback, Von Stephan was a prominent figure in the history of postal services in Germany. The postcard was born! Learn more It is not known whether Dr. This made sending postcards abroad much cheaper, and less complicated. Learn more Today, the UPU is a specialized United Nations agency that coordinates postal policies among its members, standardizing procedures and making international mail delivery much simpler.

Learn more A year later, prominent London journalist James Douglas wrote: "Like all great inventions, the Picture Postcard has wrought a silent revolution in our habits.

Hook was arrested for the second time after making no attempt to pay his debts to the government. He was confined in a sponging-house for two years, where he started his work as a novelist. His novels were known for their racy stories, often about his friends as well as vivid portraits. Indeed, Theodore Hook is known as a man of letters, an intellectual, but not in the traditional way. His novels do not possess the rigid structure of his contemporaries. Rather, they would be more appropriately described as improvisations, a style that reflects his happy-go-lucky and free spirit.

Hook is not only a man of letters figuratively, but also literally. He bet a friend that he could make Berners Street famous for a week. To do this, he sent thousands of letters in the name of a Mrs. Tottenham on 54 Berners Street requesting for several services and inviting visitors.

According to some sources , Hook knew Mrs. Tottenham and the joke was revenge for a past dispute. Charlton elsewhere Carllton and H. Lipman from Philadelphia patented the correspondence postcard. It costs just half the amount you would spend for writing paper and an envelope.

At the same time, it facilitates postal manipulation. But the post office required the same fee for a card as for a letter. Some other companies had drawn advertisements on such cards. These cards were apparently the first that had official permission for delivery by the state mail service from February 27, However, they did not catch on, and for a long time they were not produced.

The oldest known copy was posted in october, In , the 5th Austro-German Postal Conference took place in Karlsruhe; the participants were treated to the views of Heinrich von Stephan , who recommended the introduction of an open postcard, printed and sold by the state. Although its reception among the delegates was favourable, the proposal was declined by the German government for fear that part of its income would be lost.

Three years later, the Main Post Office in Berlin received two further similar proposals, almost at the same time. The first July came from a Leipzig bookseller, Friedlein, who asked for permission to issue a universal postcard; the second August 1st, was from another bookseller in Leipzig, Friedrich Wilhelm Pardubitz, recommending the introduction of a universal correspondence card.

One side of the card was intended for the address and, on the opposite side, 30 different texts were printed. These were short phrases: a variety of greetings; congratulations on birthday or nameday; expressions of condolence; etc.

The sender of the card could choose the most appropriate phrase and delete the remainder. Both proposals were declined by the Main Post Office, nominally because the cards lacked the character of a letter. The idea of introducing the open postcard, which had been voiced in Karlsruhe, aroused the interest of the Austrian representative Kolbensteiner, who made the idea known to Dr.

He found the idea so attractive that he pursued it intensely in the following years. On January 26, , he published an extensive article in the Vienna evening newspaper, Neue Freie Presse,with the proposal of introducing an open postcard, the size of a letter envelope, in the territory of Austria-Hungary; the franking was to cost two kreutzers. Herrmann pointed out, inter alia, that letter costs were too high.

One-third of all business and private letters were just very brief communications which were not, by their nature, intimate or secret, and hence could just as easily be written on open postcards.

The Austrian Ministry of Posts responded exceptionally flexibly and, contrary to its common practice, unusually quickly. And so, on September 25, , it issued a decree introducing the correspondence card into postal practice.

The first copies came into existence on October 1, A yellow two-kreutzer stamp was printed directly on the card; the yellowish card, measuring x85 mm, had one side intended exclusively for the address while the other side was left blank for a written communication. During the first three months, almost three million of these correspondence cards were sold in Austria-Hungary.

Thus, the idea of Von Stephan, realized by Dr. Herrmann, gave the world the correspondence card and eventually also the picture postcard, which developed from it through various interesting stages. The mass popularity of the correspondence card in Austria-Hungary made other countries of the world wish to follow suit.

The first to do so was The north German Confederation constituted , where the correspondence card was put on sale on June 25, It was x mm in size, and a stamp had tobe affixed on it with paste. It was franked with a stamp of the value of one silver grosch, which was the fee for a normal letter inside the country. It is clear that the general public appreciated the enforced brevity of the communication as, in Berlin alone, around 45, cards were sold to those interested on the day mentioned.

By the end of , over ten million had been sold in Germany. Correspondence cards were successively introduced in postal services all over the world. It must be pointed out that, unfortunately, the data on this point in the specialist literature differ considerably; thus, many discrepancies appear, even in relation to the Jubilee picture postcard of , issued in Vienna on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the origin of the correspondence card [picture VIII, IX].

In a richly decorated frame with the facsimile of his signature and other texts. The heading says that the postcard was issued to commemorate the invention of the postal card mentioned in the Vienna press on January 26, The frame, which determines the space for an address, contains names of countries according to the year of postal card introduction between Their comparison using a smaller magnifying glass with data in the text shows that individual years are not always consistent.

The popular response to the issue of correspondence cards was roughly the same everywhere - enthusiastic reception and rapid usage in daily practice by millions of people. In England, as many as , cards were sold on the first day and, within several weeks, 1,, cards were posted every week; in the complete year , the number of cards posted was 75 million. Various sources in the literature cite other enormous numbers, all based on statistical information.

By the way, before it became standardized in its present shape, the correspondence card underwent many variations in format. In contrast to the correspondence card i. Many attempts at its introduction had been made long before the advent of the correspondence card.

The introduction of private products of this kind into postal communication should have been permitted by the postal administration, but it is well known that regulations exist to be circumvented. It is difficult to say, you must judge for yourself. As early as , one of the first names emerges from the anonymous world of prevailingly second-rank painters and engravers; the Frenchman Demaison made an attempt to issue open greeting cards with engravings and a printed text but it soon failed, due to lack of interest on the part of the general public,especially the so-called high society, who disliked the feeling that anyone could read the text.

After suffering severe financial losses, Demaison gave up the idea, and finally disappeared without trace in the bloody turmoil of the French revolution. Apparently, the first congratulation cards were issued in Scotland, with the inscription Compliments of the season. The first of them were produced in in the printing house of Charles Drummond in Edinburgh.

The cards were sent in envelopes; a one-penny stamp was pasted on the envelope for local Scottish destinations, a two-pence stamp for England and abroad. I have forgotten to send congratulations to my friends, declared Henry Cole, the director of a museum in London several days before Christmas ; he may have been the already mentioned collaborator of Rowland Hill.

So he ordered about cards with a printed Christmas theme which were subsequently hand-coloured. In this way, the first English Christmas picture postcards are said to have originated; they were sent in envelopes. Other versions of the event exist, other names are given, etc.. It appears that, in the s, an English Chief Master of Hounds, Nicholas Perry, sent postcards with an invitation to hunt. Similar cards, with pictures, were also used in Germany from the s.

In England, at that time, visiting cards with a short communication, and franked with a one-penny stamp, were posted. An Englishman, Baron Raphael Tuck, apparently originally an impecunious book-printer, has also been denoted as the inventor of the picture postcard.

His situation is said to have changed when he started the production of Christmas postcards in According to one report, he invented the picture postcard only in One day, it occurred to Tuck that a postcard - provided with a view of a landscape or a foreign town - or a congratulation card with the corresponding picture - would say much more to the recipient than lengthy writing and, at the same time, it would save the sender time and effort. These assumptions were perfectly fulfilled.

After several years, he was the owner of a vast establishment for the production of picture postcards. In , a picture postcard of the unusual size 18x12 cm, the designer of which was a lithographer, J. Miesler of Berlin was delivered by post.

They can also be found on writing paper, for instance below the signature of the owner of the company. Sometimes more or less talented individuals occasionally drew something for the recipient, as they had previously done on writing paper. However, for this purpose, correspondence cards of a larger size were more convenient.

The first cards of the north German Confederation were of such a kind; they appeared in the first half of the s, and were significantly larger than the first Austro-Hungarian correspondence cards. The first preserved pictorial additional print made in a printing house by a professional printer is on a card of the north German Confederation.

It was made or commissioned by the bookseller and owner of a printing house, August Schwartz in Oldenburg. After the Franco-Prussian war broke out, he sent a card with a Latin communication on July 16, , to his father-in-law and mother-in-law in Magdeburg where they were beleaguered on the way from Marienbad because of troop movements ; on the address side, in the left corner, he printed a picture of an artilleryman attending a cannon. As the picture is not much larger than the stamp pasted in the opposite corner, the whole composition was interestingly balanced from the point of view of graphic art.

The additional printing is probably black as judged from a reproduction.