Mail history: from three to e-mail. Pigeon mail. Postcards. Mail delivery

People have always needed information exchange. That is why the history of the mail began long before the appearance of writing and the letters familiar to the modern person. In ancient times, a voice was used to broadcast the news. This method was preserved in some regions up to the Middle Ages. For example, in the Inca empire for many centuries there were messengers, who spread news from the capital, moving around the country with the help of a network of ramified mountain roads. Later they began using a nodular letter, in which cords and filaments acted as a carrier of information.

Cuneiform tablets

The first system of writing in the classical sense of the word is cuneiform. With its appearance about 3 thousand years BC. E. The history of the mail has moved to a fundamentally new level. Cuneiform spread among the peoples of ancient Mesopotamia: Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Hittites.

Messages were printed with a wooden stick on clay tablets, while the clay kept its softness. Because of the specific tools, characteristic wedge-shaped strokes arose. Envelopes for such letters were also made of clay. To read the message, the addressee had to break the "packaging".

The ancient history of the mail for a long time remained almost unknown. A great contribution to its study was the discovery of the library of the last great king of Assyria, Ashurbanipal, who ruled in the 7th century. BC. E. On his orders, an archive of 25 thousand clay tablets was created. Among the cuneiform texts were both state documents and ordinary letters. The library was opened in the XIX century. Thanks to a unique find, it was possible to decipher the cuneiform not clear before the translators.

Shells and drawings

Indians of the Huron tribe dispensed beads from shells. They threaded on threads and so received whole letters. Each plate had a certain color. Black meant death, red - war, yellow - tribute, etc. The ability to read similar colored belts was considered a privilege and wisdom.

The history of the mail went through an "illustrated" stage. Before writing letters, people learned to draw. Rock paintings of the ancients, whose patterns are still found in deaf caves, is also a kind of post, which went to the modern addressee for generations. The language of drawings and tattoos is still preserved in isolated Polynesian tribes.

Alphabet and Sea Mail

Its unique system of writing was with the ancient Egyptians. In addition, they had a pigeon mail. To transfer information, Egyptians used hieroglyphics. Much less known is the fact that it was this people who created the first prototype of the alphabet. Among the many hieroglyphic drawings, they had hieroglyphs that transmitted sounds (there were 24 in all).

In the future this principle of encryption was developed by other peoples of the Ancient East. The first actual alphabet is the alphabet that appeared in the city of Ugarit in the territory of modern Syria around the XV century. BC. E. Then a similar system spread in other Semitic languages.

His alphabet was with the Phoenicians. This merchant people became famous for skilled shipbuilders. The sailors carried out mail delivery to numerous colonies in different parts of the Mediterranean. On the basis of the Phoenician alphabet, the Aramaic and Greek alphabets emerged, from which almost all modern writing systems originate.

Angarion

Angarion - the ancient Persian postal service, created in the Achaemenid empire in the VI. BC. E. It was founded by Tsar Cyrus II the Great. Prior to this, the delivery of mail from one end of the state to another could stretch for months, which categorically did not suit the authorities.

At the time of Cyrus, hangars appeared (the so-called horse couriers). The postal business of that era gave the first sprouts of military field mail, which still exists today. The longest road of the Angarion stretched from Suz to Sardi, and its length was 2500 kilometers. The huge route was divided into a hundred stations, on which horses and couriers changed. With the help of this effective system, the Persian kings freely handed out instructions to their satraps in the most remote provinces of the vast empire.

Under the successor of Cyrus II of Darius I, the Tsar's road was built, the quality of the location was so high that Alexander the Great, Roman emperors and even Charles I, who ruled the medieval Frankish Empire in the 9th century, used the example of its organization (and in general the Angarion) in his state.

The Roman Age

As noted above, the Roman history of mail and letters was much like the Persian one. In the republic, and later in the empire, there was a parallel state and private messaging system. The latter was based on the activities of numerous messengers who were hired (or used as slaves) by rich patricians.

At the height of its power, the Roman Empire embraced colossal territories in three parts of the world. Thanks to a unified network of ramified roads, it was already possible to send a letter from Syria to Spain or from Egypt to Gaul in the 1st century of our era. The small stations where the horses were changed were arranged at a distance of only a few kilometers. Packages were transported by horse couriers, carts were used for luggage.

The fastest and most efficient state mail was available only for official correspondence. Later, special permits were issued for the use of this system by traveling officials and Christian priests. The state mail was managed by the Prefect of Pretoria, close to the Emperor, and from the 4th century - Master of Offices.

Medieval Europe

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the former postal system collapsed. Messages began to be delivered with huge difficulties. The borders, the absence and desolation of roads, criminality and the disappearance of a single centralized power interfered. The postal message became even worse with the advent of feudalism. Large landowners often levied huge fees for travel through their territory, which greatly complicated the work of couriers.

The only little centralized organization in Europe in the early Middle Ages was the church. Monasteries, archives, temples and administrative bodies needed constant exchange of information in the vast majority of politically fragmented Europe. For the organization of the postal message began to take whole spiritual orders. Quite often, important correspondence on the Old World was transported by wandering monks and priests, whose cassocks and spiritual status were often the best means of protection from unpleasantness with strangers.

Their corporation of messengers arose at universities, where students flocked from all sorts of edges. The couriers of the educational institutions of Naples, Bologna, Toulouse and Paris became particularly famous. They maintained a connection between the students and their relatives.

Most of all in the mail needed merchants and artisans. Without an exchange of written communications with their partners, they could not establish trade and sales of products. Separate corporations of merchant mail arose around guilds and other associations of merchants. The standard of such a system was created in Venice, whose trading contacts connected the medieval republic not only with the whole of Europe, but also with distant countries beyond the Mediterranean Sea.

In Italy and Germany, where the institute of free cities was formed, effective city mail was spread. Their own experienced messengers were at Mainz, Cologne, Nordhausen, Breslau, Augsburg, etc. They delivered both letters to the administration and parcels of ordinary citizens who paid for the service at a certain rate.

Truck drivers and troika

Thanks to the "Tale of Tsar Saltan" by Alexander Pushkin, everyone in childhood heard the phrase: "The messenger is going with a diploma". Domestic mail originated in the period of Kievan Rus. The need for a correspondence exchange system has always been relevant for our country because of its vast territories. Colossal distances for Western Europeans were reflected in the norms typical for Russian messengers and incredible for foreigners.

In the times of Ivan the Terrible, the Tsar's couriers were obliged to walk a hundred kilometers a day, which was difficult to explain to foreign observers. In the XIII - XVIII centuries. Postal stations in Russia were called pits. They kept horses and inns worked.

There was also a so-called Yamskaya duty. It extended to the draft population of the provinces. The peasants who served the duty had to organize the transportation of government officials, cargo and diplomats. This tradition was spread by the Tatar-Mongols during their yoke over the East Slavic principalities. In the XVI century, the Russian state appeared Yamskoy order. This analogue of the ministry was engaged not only in postal, but also tax matters. A short phrase: "A messenger is going with a letter" can hardly convey the complexity of courier business in medieval Russia.

About two hundred years ago there appeared the famous all-alley teams of three horses. They were equipped specifically for long-distance travel. Located on each side of the horse- drawn horses galloped, and the central root moved trot. Due to this configuration, the maximum speed for its time was reached at 45-50 kilometers per hour.

From stagecoaches to railways and steamships

Centralized systems of royal mails appeared in England, Sweden, France and other developed countries in the 16th-17th centuries. At the same time, there was a growing need for international communication.

On the turn of the Middle Ages and New Times in England stagecoaches spread. This mail coach gradually supplanted simple horse couriers. In the end, she conquered the world and appeared in all parts of the world from Australia to America. The arrival of the postal crew in the city or village was reported using a special horn.

Another turning point in the development of communication systems occurred in the early XIX century with the advent of shipping and railways. A new type of water transport has proved itself well in the organization of British-Indian mail. Especially to facilitate the journey to the east, the British sponsored the construction of the Suez Canal in Egypt, thanks to which the ships could not circumambulate Africa.

Mailboxes

There are several versions of where the first mailbox appeared. According to one of them, the tambours established in Florence in the beginning of the XVI century can be considered as such. They were placed next to the churches - the main public places of the city. A wooden box with a slit at the top was intended for the transmission of anonymous denunciations, in which it was reported of state crimes.

In the same XVI century, such novelties appeared in the sailors. Each British and Dutch colony had its own mailbox. With the help of this technology, seafarers transferred correspondence to other ships.

The French inventor of the mailbox is Renoir de Vilaye. It was he who solved the problem of correspondence between Parisians. In the middle of the 17th century there were four post offices in the French capital, but they could not cope with the huge flow of correspondence of ordinary citizens. Renoir de Vilaye was a member of the government and the National Academy of Sciences. Having connected his own ingenuity and administrative resources (permission of King Louis XIV), in 1653 he initiated the installation of mailboxes throughout Paris, which greatly facilitated the work of the postal service. The novel quickly took root in the capital and spread to other cities of the country.

The history of Russia's post office has developed in such a way that domestic mailboxes appeared only in 1848. The first such curiosities have been established in Moscow and St. Petersburg. At first the structures were wooden, then they were replaced by metal ones. For urgent items, mailboxes painted in bright orange were used.

Brands

The international postal system that has developed in the New Times has many shortcomings. The key one was that the fees for sending parcels remained difficult despite any logistical and technical innovations. This problem was first solved in the UK. In 1840, there appeared the earliest known brand - the "black penny". Her release was associated with the introduction of tariffs for the forwarding of letters.

The initiator of the brand was the politician Rowland Hill. The profile of the young Queen Victoria was engraved on the picture of the stamp. The innovation has taken root and since then each letter envelope of the letter was equipped with a special label. Stickers have appeared in other countries. The reform has led to a significant increase in the number of postal shipments in the UK more than twice just in the first year after the epoch-making transformation.

In Russia, the brands appeared in 1857. The first sign of postal payment was estimated at 10 kopecks. On the stamp there was a two-headed eagle. For the circulation it was chosen this heraldic symbol, as it was the emblem of the Postal Department of the empire. This department tried to keep up with Western trends. The USSR Post also paid much attention to the brands. Soviet postage payment signs appeared in 1923.

Postcards

Familiar to all postcards have emerged relatively recently. The first card of this kind appeared in 1869 in Austria-Hungary. Soon such a format won European popularity. It happened during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, when the French soldiers began to send massively to their native illustrated postcards.

Frontal fashion was instantly intercepted by traders. Within a few months, postcards began to be mass produced in England, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. The first Russian card was published in 1872. Six years later, at an ad hoc congress in Paris, the international standard for card sizes was adopted (9 centimeters long, 14 centimeters wide). Later he was changed several times. Over time, subspecies of postcards appeared: greeting cards, species, reproductions, art, advertising, political, etc.

New trends

In 1820, an envelope was invented in the UK. After another 30 years there were stamp parcels. In the middle of the XIX century, the letter could make a round-the-world trip in 80-85 days. Departures accelerated when the Trans-Siberian Railway was opened in Russia.

The nineteenth century was marked by the successive appearance of the telegraph, telephone and radio. The emergence of new technologies did not diminish the importance that mail represented for then-people. The telegraph and did render invaluable assistance to its development (in all countries the departments responsible for these two types of communications gradually unified).

In 1874, the Universal Postal Union was established and the World Postal Congress was convened. The goal of the event was the signing of an international agreement that could unify the disparate systems of sending correspondence from different countries of the world. Representatives of 22 states attended the congress. They signed the Universal Single Postal Agreement, soon renamed the Universal Postal Convention. The document summarized the international rules for the exchange of items. Since then, the history of the post of Russia has continued in the mainstream of the worldwide evolution of postal communication.

At the end of the XIX century, the development of aeronautics began. Conquering the air by man has led to the disappearance of any physical barriers to shipments around the world. As already mentioned above, even ancient civilizations had their own airmail - pigeon mail. Birds were used by people for communication, even at the very zenith of progress. Especially indispensable pigeons became during bloody conflicts. Feathered mail was regularly used on the fronts of the First and Second World War.

Email

The modern era has many definitions. They call it information. And this is largely true. Today, information is the main resource that drives progress. The revolution connected with it was due to the appearance of the Internet and modern means of communication.

Nowadays the paper mail, familiar to many generations of people, is gradually giving up its place of electronic. The iron box for envelopes was replaced by e-mail, and social networks and completely erased the idea of distance. If twenty years ago the Internet was perceived as an eccentric amusement, now without it it is difficult to imagine the life of a modern person. An e-mail accessible to every person has embodied a centuries-old evolution of mail with all its various jerks and jumps.