It was created to make paying the postage the job of the person who had sent the letter.
There had been many attempts before to achieve this, but only one took off.
The postage stamp idea first started with the little known Austro-Hungarian, Lovrenc Košir, who came up with the idea of the postage stamp, being described as
artificially affixed postal tax stamps.
Later on, the famous Sir Rowland Hill officially invented the idea after reading many documents, to then come up with a reform idea for the declining postal service. In 1837, his
Post office Reform its Importance and Practicability
In this letter, Rowland wrote of
a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp covered with a glutinous wash
Hill’s ideas quickly won him the title of the inventor of the stamp, as the first stamp came out in 1840 (the Penny Black).
However, after the invention, many claimed for the invention of the postage stamp, with many claimant’s families still following up cases to this day. These included: Curry Gabriel, Ferdinand Egarter, Francis Worrell Stevens, James Chalmers, John Grey, Samuel Forrester and Samuel Roberts.
Credits: Source – BBC, Wikipedia Contributors and Julian Osley for the image (it has not been edited)
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