Penny Blacks

The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued in the city of Bath by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on May 1, 1840, for use from May 6. more...

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The idea of an adhesive stamp to indicate prepayment of postage was part of Rowland Hill's 1837 proposal to reform the British postal system. A companion idea which Hill disclosed on February 13, 1837 at a government inquiry was that of a separate sheet which folded to form an enclosure or envelope for carrying letters. At that time postage was charged by the sheet and distance involved. Hill noted that the stamp idea might obviate the envelope.

Hill was given a two-year contract to run the new system, and he and Henry Cole subsequently ran a competition to identify the best way to prepay letters. None of the 2600 entries were good enough, so in the end Hill launched the service in 1840 with an envelope bearing a reproduction of a design created by the artist William Mulready and a stamp bearing a reproduction of the profile of the reigning British monarch, Queen Victoria. There are also references on the record to covers bearing the Mulready design. To this day, all British stamps bear a profile of the reigning monarch somewhere on the design, and are the only nationality of stamp that do not name their country of origin.

In 1839, the British Treasury had announced a competition to design the new stamps, but none of the submissions were considered suitable, and the Treasury chose instead to use a profile of Victoria. The head was engraved by Charles and Fredrick Heath based on a sketch provided by Henry Cole. Cole's sketch was in turn based on the head by William Wyon, that had been done for a medal used to commemorate the visit of Queen Victoria to the City of London in the year she ascended the throne, 1837. The word "POSTAGE" appeared at the top of the stamp, to denote its intended use (revenue stamps had long been used in the UK) and "ONE PENNY" at the bottom, indicating the amount that had been pre-paid for the transmission of the letter to which it was affixed. The background consisted of finely engraved engine turnings. In addition, the two upper corners contained star like designs and the lower corners contained letters designating the position of each stamp in the sheet, "A A", "A B", and so forth. As the name suggests, the stamp was printed all in black. The stamps were printed by Perkins Bacon.

Although May 6 was the official first date when the labels were available for the pre-payment of postage, there are known covers postmarked May 2, due to postmasters selling the stamps from 1 May. Stamps used on letters prior to 6 May should have been treated as un-paid and charged double the rate on delivery. A single example is also known on cover dated 1 May 1840.

The Penny Black was in use for only a little over a year. It was found that a red cancellation stamp on a black background was hard to see, and the red ink was easy to remove from the Penny Black. In 1841 the Treasury switched to the Penny Red and issued cancellation stamps with black ink. The black ink which was much more effective as a cancellation was also harder to remove. The re-use of stamps with the un-cancelled portions of two stamps to form an unused whole impression continued and in 1864 the stars in the top corners were replaced by the check letters, as they appeared in the lower corners, but in reverse order.

Read more at Wikipedia.org