I is for Innovators
The postal innovator best known and most often discussed in philatelic works is, writes Maurice Buxton, Rowland Hill – as the ‘postage label stamps’ you may possibly be familiar with were his idea (even if they were originally something of an afterthought). However, many other people came up with bright ideas over the years, and a few examples follow.
Hill wasn’t the first person from outside the Post Office to succeed in effecting great changes to postal operations. A notable figure from half a century earlier was John Palmer, a theatre owner from Bath who observed that stagecoaches between towns travelled much more rapidly than the posts carried by individual riders – one day compared to three between Bath and London, for example. His proposal to the Post Office that coaches could be used to carry the mails met with resistance, but his lobbying eventually persuaded the Chancellor to let him try a trial run between Bristol and London in 1784. The mails between these cities then took up to 38 hours, but the coach did it in just 16. Other postal coaching routes rapidly followed, and by 1797 there were 42 of them. Palmer himself was Surveyor and Comptroller General of the Post Office 1786-92 (although under the agreements he also profited handsomely from the increased postal business).
Of course, the success of occasional outsiders shouldn’t detract from the many postal innovators from inside the system. Prominent among these is Heinrich von Stephan, who entered the Prussian post office at age 16 and rose steadily, becoming postmaster-general of the North German Confederation in 1870 aged only 39. Among his general achievements were the development of the German parcel post system (in 1883 it carried more than half again as many parcels as the rest of the world put together), and proposing the idea of postcards (although the Austrians were the first to implement it). He also showed great readiness to adopt new technology such as telegraphs and telephones.
His chief claim to fame however is as the ‘father of the UPU’. International postal traffic until the late 19th century was governed by a mishmash of mostly bilateral postal treaties. Rates could vary considerably depending on which one or more of these applied to the route a letter was sent, and even postal staff sometimes got them wrong. In response von Stephan, by now Postmaster-general of the German Empire, called for an international postal congress to harmonise the rules. This was held in Bern in 1874 with von Stephan presiding, and the delegates agreed to his proposals. The General Postal Union treaty established ‘a single postal territory for the reciprocal exchange of correspondence’, including uniform flat rates to any member of the Union – such an obvious advantage
that by the end of the century essentially all countries had signed up.
Innovations in the production and marketing of stamps, however, were perhaps of more immediate impact on philately. The idea of issuing stamps with an eye on the philatelic market goes back to the 19th century. The most famous – or infamous – name here is Nicolas Seebeck, a US stamp dealer from the 1870s onwards, who also owned a printing company. In the 1890s he produced stamps and postal stationery for several Latin American countries under unusual contract terms: their postal services were supplied for free (often well in excess of actual needs) provided the country would demonetise the issues at the end of the year, return the remainders to Seebeck, and allow him to make as many reprints as he wanted. This resulted in a large number of new stamps: for example, for Nicaragua he produced 128 regular stamps, 139 officials, 41 postage dues, 66 telegraphs, 41 envelopes, 26 wrappers, and 40 postcards between 1890 and 1899!
This did not go down well with the collectors of the time, most of whom still collected ‘whole world’. There was even a ‘Society for the Suppression of Speculative Stamps’, supported by the leading UK and US philatelic societies, although it failed to convince enough people to boycott these issues (ironically, ‘Seebecks’ are now often sought after, especially on commercial covers).
A more respectable version of this was the growth of ‘philatelic bureaux’ to provide convenient services to collectors. A pioneer here is stamp dealer Otto Bickel, who moved from Baden to San Marino in 1892 and immediately began to promote the philately of his new residence. This resulted in what has been termed the first such bureau in the world, although the idea took some time to catch on generally. US collectors can thank Congressman Ernest R. Ackerman, an awardwinning philatelist, who became one of the most ardent supporters of the Philatelic Agency in Washington. This opened in 1921, the aim being to track philatelic sales and provide a steady revenue stream, while giving formal recognition to ‘the growing importance of stamp collecting’. Sales grew rapidly from some $20,000 in the first seven months to millions of dollars a year by the mid-1930s.
The UK was some way behind the curve in this, with a specialist philatelic bureau opened only in 1963. The next step was the development of more promising stamps for it to sell. Design criteria for commemoratives at the time mandated the use of the full Wilding head as on the definitives, which caused enormous problems for the poor stamp designers – as a three-quarter face photographic portrait it drew attention away from the main subject, and really wasn’t
easy to work into a balanced design together with whatever other elements were required.
The chief innovators here were designer David Gentleman and cabinet minister Tony Benn. The latter was responsible for a number of new ideas when Postmaster-general in 1964-66 (such as postal banking becoming known as ‘Girobank’), and he took an interest in improving stamp design, commissioning Gentleman to produce a demonstration album of possibilities. Although the more controversial ideas from this exercise (such as not using the Queen’s head at all) were not carried forward, it led to the practice of using a silhouette of the Queen’s head instead, at first in a large size and then in the small size still used today. This effectively acts as a ‘logo’ for British stamps, and gives artists much more scope to create successful designs. Fortunately,
Royal Mail had historically been keen to preserve its reputation as a respectable issuer and avoid producing lots of Seebeck-style new issues aimed only at coll… ah, never mind.