The #stampoftheday for May 28 is a 1-cent Ulysses S. Grant postal card postmarked May 28 1892. (Yes, in addition to U.S., U.N., and Israeli stamps and first-day covers, as well as postage meter cancellations, my father also had postcards, some old, some from the mid-19th century, in his collection. In fact I’ve been using some of his many Israeli postal cards from the 1950s for birthday cards and other short notes.)
Postal cards date back to the latter part of the 19th century. At the Austro-German Postal Conference held in Karlsruhe, Baden in 1865 (which presumably was a wild affair), a Dr. Heinrich von Stephen suggested that a single sheet of stiff paper could be used as a way of allow for inexpensive written communication. While some people liked the idea, others were concerned that the cards would not be private and worried that people would not use them.
Emanuel Alexander Herrmann, an Austrian economist, however, took up the idea, and on January 26, 1869 he published an article in Austria’s leading paper proposing that all envelope-size cards, whether written, produced by copying machine or printed, ought to be admitted as mail if they contained not more than 20 words including address and sender’s signature and showed a 2-Kreuzer postage stamp, less than half the cost of regular letter postage which was 5 Kreuzers. Austria-Hungary’s Postmaster General Vincenz Baron Maly von Vevanovic took up the idea (but dropped the 20-word limit), and in September 1869 the Correspondz Karte (Correspondence Card) was officially introduced in Austria.
The innovation garnered international attention. “Manufacturer and Builder,” a British publication, reported: “The Austrian government has introduced a novelty in postage, which might be introduced with great benefit in all countries. The object is to enable persons to send off; with the least possible trouble, messages of small importance, without the trouble of obtaining paper, pens, and envelopes. Cards of a fixed size are sold at all the post-offices for two kreutzers, one side being for the address and the other for this note, which may be written either with ink or with any kind of pencil. It is thrown into the box, and delivered without envelopes. A halfpenny post of this kind would certainly be very convenient, especially in large towns, and a man of business carrying a few such cards in his pocket-book would find them very useful. There is an additional advantage attaching to the card, namely, that of having the address and postmark inseparably fixed to the note.”
Britain soon began issuing postcards in 1870 as did the North German Federation, together with the states of Württemberg and Baden; followed, in 1871, by Switzerland, Luxemburg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Canada. The U.S., however, did not issue its first postal card until 1872. And in 1874, postal officials from 22 countries came together to create the General Postal Union which set standards including establishing a standard 31/2 by 51/2 inch size for government issued postal cards.
In 1875 the U.S. Post Office Department began selling postal cards in uncut sheets. This allowed them to be purchased by those who wished to continue printing on them as they could still be fed into a large press. Most of these sheets were purchased for the purpose of advertising and by the 1890s most of the about a million postal cards sold annually were being used for advertising. Many of these were printed on the postcard shown here, which was first issued in 1891.
The 1890s also saw the first widespread use of picture postcards. Although the earliest picture postcards date from the inception of postal cards, their use in the U.S. was relatively rare until they became a popular offering for people visiting the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Hermann, the economist who got the ball rolling, also was an important collector of the folksongs of Carinthia, the Austrian state where he had come from. He is buried in Vienna’s Meidling cemeter where his tombstone says: “Der Erfinder der Postkarte”, that is: “The Inventor of the Postal Card.” And, that, my friends, is the posting for today.
Stay safe and be well.