Establishment of state postal services in the ancient world. Development of postal services. Postal history: how postal services appeared

Information. It is probably difficult to name something else in our world that is just as intangible and just as dense, permeating all directions and constantly accumulating around us. The preservation of information appeared with the first rock inscriptions, and along with the need to transmit it over long distances, signal fires were lit and drums began to sound. This is how the first post office was born. In this series of articles we will show you how this most important segment of our lives works, how it is evolving, what it was and what it will be: mail.

People learned to speak relatively long ago, but the human voice is imperfect when it comes to sending messages far away. As the need to share information not only accumulated, but increased exponentially as our world evolved, new forms of information were born along with it. postal service. From the first signal drums, which appeared about 8,000 years ago, ancient tribes moved on to fire and smoke: they can be seen from afar, and the very fact of lighting a smoke column was a kind of signal. African tribes still use tom-toms for communication, and bonfires were used even by the Indians of the 20th century.

The first beginnings of postal communication were born in ancient states along with the advent of writing: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Persia, China, and the Roman Empire. The first messengers walked along the roads; later they mounted horses. Messages and written messages were transmitted according to the relay race principle. In the Ancient East, rulers needed to be supplied with constant information about what was happening in the slave-owning territories under their control. It is not surprising that this led to the development of the prototype of postal service. It is believed that the first postal message was sent about 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia in the form of a sealed clay letter.

The post of antiquity was built on messengers, who, orally, in writing, by sea, on horseback, by land, on foot - and most often for military purposes - carried news to all corners of the states. This system of transmitting messages received particular development in the Roman Empire, and with its fall (about 520 AD), mail ceased to exist. In feudal medieval Europe of the 11th–15th centuries, post and communications as such were transferred to spiritual and secular institutions. That is, the church began to deal with mail. We will talk about this period later.

N.K. Roerich, "Messenger"

Let's think about it for a second. When you're in last time Have you used postal services? You may remember a package that you picked up from a post office or directly from a courier. They sent letters to some government agency. They opened envelopes in search of money in distant unhappy childhood. Sending “chain letters”, carefully “licking”, as expected, each envelope, without indicating the return address. It seems that mail is moving away from us, transforming itself mostly into a delivery service and going to the “cloud”. In fact, mail is evolving. The news and article that you are reading now is an example of the evolution of news that has come a long way from the weathered hands or even the lips of a Persian messenger to the image on your display. E-mail, without which we cannot imagine our lives, was impossible without the Internet, and the Internet appeared not so long ago - it is not even 50 years old. Instead of emails, people sent only paper letters. And even in the future, when, perhaps, there will no longer be a need to deliver a package - the desired product will be printed on your 3D printer, materialized in a teleporter, or you will use exclusively virtual products - all this will be just an evolution of mail.

Information does not disappear without a trace, does not dissolve in a black hole, it only takes on a different form.

There are not many phenomena in the world, or even institutions, that have emerged as a result of consistent and independent development across the globe. Offhand, we can name only the most grandiose ones - writing and languages, many of them; an institute of science that has absorbed the research of scientists all over the world over many millennia; a matter of diplomacy and statehood, which even in modern times do not shy away from the norms developed back in the Roman Empire; artistic culture, the heyday of which is considered to be Ancient Greece. Try to include mail here, and you will be surprised how perfectly this institute fits into this series and includes the best of what people in different parts of the globe can come up with, together and separately.

The medieval church, being the one and only authority, took on the task of centralization, which would have been impossible without its own message system - the monastery mail. Couriers from the monasteries maintained contact between individual monasteries and the head of the church in Rome, between monastic orders and their brotherhoods. At the same time, stations for changing horses were born, which later migrated to Russia. Actually, the word “post” comes from the Italian “statio posita in...”, which meant a station for changing horses. The word “mail” (post) was first used in this meaning in the 12th century.

European universities of the mid-second millennium, to which, historically, students flocked from a variety of countries, almost walked, in Lomonosov style, to get an education, used this important point: For a fee, professional university mail messengers maintained contact between students and their families, sometimes delivering letters to individuals.

An interesting phenomenon was the “butchers’ mail”. By nature of activity, the European butcher shop, which traveled extensively for the sake of purchasing, took on the responsibility of transporting letters and parcels. In some cities in southern Germany this became the responsibility of butchers, in return for which they received certain privileges. This post office operated until the end of the 17th century and in some places received national significance.

Franz von Taxis

And yet, the first organized mail in every sense of the word is considered to be the mail created by members of the Tasso clan (Tassis, Taxis). The Thurn and Taxis post office existed from the second half of the 15th century until 1867 and made a huge contribution to the development of postal services in Europe. The Taxis post office was maintained at their expense, at their own risk, but invariably remained a private enterprise, although the emperors claimed to establish it. The Thurn und Taxis post office importantly adopted all the effects of the evolution of postal services and promptly introduced the postmark and postage stamp into use. 400 years is not a bad history for private mail.

As for Russian postal service, Russian postal service, which developed on the territory of the then Russian state, historians are of the opinion that our ancestors took over the postal service from the Mongol conquerors. During that troubled period, postal stations (which we talked about above) and “pits” appeared on the main roads, where “yamchas” (messengers) changed horses. As you might guess, the word “coachman” is rooted in this legend. And the word “postman” found its way into pre-revolutionary Russia in 1716 (before that, postal employees were called “postmen”).

The reforms of Peter I led to the fact that postal services in Russia appeared in all the main cities of the country. The state took over the postal service, the first post offices and post offices were opened, and the position of postmaster was introduced. The first mail cars (between St. Petersburg and Moscow) paved their way in 1851. What happened next - you know Mailbox The first letter in your life fell. We'll talk about how mail works and which of its elements have undergone evolution and which have remained unchanged.

It is impossible to describe in words how far the influence of evolution and revolution has reached in the postal service, on land and at sea. The post can certainly be called a great achievement of mankind. The peace of 1782, which followed the American War of Independence, was concluded only after negotiations that lasted more than two years. Prussia and Austria fought in 1866. The campaign took seven days; and seven weeks elapsed from the declaration of war to the formal conclusion of peace. Obviously, the time difference in both cases was due only to the fact that in one case the news took longer, and in the other - faster.

We can look at the past with mixed feelings - remembering our frivolous ancestors, who were in no hurry and who had enough time for reflection; we consider those times lethargic, sluggish, calm.

We are proud of our own era as filled with life and activity, haste and nerves, high electrical voltage. But many of us know the price of this whirlpool of life events and often say: “This pace is killing.” Will this pace continue for the next hundred years? Probably yes. The evolution of mail allows us to fit more actions into a minute of life, as does the evolution of many other things, of course. Letters no longer take weeks to arrive, parcels will soon be delivered instantly, communication has practically lost any restrictions. What will mail be like in the future? You will be the first to know about it.

Testing of the first postal drones has already begun...

Quickly exchange information, send messages by E-mail to your friends, relatives, loved ones; instantly report something happening to you not only in text format, but also attach a photo report, warn your boss that you are again stuck in a traffic jam on the way to your favorite job, write/type a love letter to the object of your adoration - what can be easier? Today it is as simple as adding 2+2 (although some people end up with 5, due to late payment for an Internet service or a low battery on their mobile phone). About 50 years ago, it is no longer news that the development of technology has simplified the possibility of communication n number of times.

During its development, by whatever methods humanity has not tried to convey necessary information, basically important, to deliver in, so to speak, the right direction, to reach the addressee by any means.

Initially, having learned to draw, messages were “preserved” in the form of pictograms on the walls of caves, ideograms (for example, ancient Egyptian inscriptions). Note: a pictogram is when a glass is drawn and a glass is meant, an ideogram is when a glass is drawn and a glass is meant, booze, the glass industry, etc. in any grammatical form. Writing evolved from drawings. The Egyptians created syllabic writing by noticing that all words consist of a relatively small number of individual components or syllables. This gave them the idea to designate each syllable with a certain conventional image.

North American Indians used pictography before the end of the 19th century. Indians' petition to the US President:

An example of the use of pictograms in the modern world

An example of ideograms in the modern world

A truly great achievement in the cultural development of mankind was the transmission of sound language using a small number of letters. In the 15th century BC. e. The birthplace of the alphabet was the ancient state of Asia - Phenicia, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, where the paths of many civilizations crossed. The Phoenician alphabet consisted of 22 easy-to-write letters. All of them are consonants, because in the Phoenician language the main role was played by consonant sounds. To read a word, a Phoenician only had to see its backbone, consisting of consonants.

In Kievan Rus, writing was not alien since the 10th century; already in those days, not only noble people and the clergy, but also ordinary townspeople, including women, could read and write. One of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries in Russia was the discovery of several hundred birch bark letters dating from the 11th to 15th centuries. One of the most interesting finds are the letters of the boy Onfim.

Onfim began to write the alphabet, wrote the first eleven letters (upper right corner), after which he became bored and drew himself as an adult warrior piercing the enemy with a spear:

Each continent developed its own writing system. They also appeared in America. Everyone knows the unsolved mysterious hieroglyphic signs of the Mayan people.

Over the course of several thousand years, writing instruments and the material on which they wrote changed. Papyrus, parchment, and paper replaced stone and clay. It is logical that the need soon arose not only to preserve news. The letter has been written, but it is useless if it remains where it was written. It is necessary to deliver the message to the addressee, perhaps even “to the ends of the world.” The letter will be carried on horses or dogs, on trains, ships, airplanes. It will reach the most remote place, a hut in the taiga, a polar station in the Arctic or Antarctic.

Probably none of us now sending SMS, for example, is ready to wait for it to reach the recipient in a few years. In ancient times, the role of transmitter of information was assumed by a messenger, and later by a letter carrier. Being a messenger was difficult and unsafe. This is how he complained about his fate in 2300 BC. poor Egyptian messenger:

“When a messenger goes to a foreign country, he bequeaths his property to his children for fear of lions and Asians. And if he returned to Egypt, as soon as he reached the garden, as soon as he reached his house in the evening, and again he must go. The messenger lived in constant fear: if you bring bad news to your or someone else’s ruler, you will not cut off your head. It was believed that the one who brings bad news is himself to blame for the misfortune.”

In Greece, messengers were held in high esteem; in Persia, letters were passed along a chain of foot and horse messengers; Japanese messengers held bells in their hands. Wealthy patricians who owned slaves used them as their own messengers for short distances, and for long distances they used the services of itinerant traders or travelers. Letters sent in this way often took many months to arrive, when they sometimes lost their meaning. Communication with overseas possessions was maintained through ships.

In the states of the most ancient culture of South America, there were postal couriers on the roads, whose task was to quickly deliver the orders of the ruler and transfer important news and news. The messages were oral, since the Incas did not know writing. Such messages were kept in few words in order to avoid confusion or, even worse, to forget it. It was repeated several times until the next messenger remembered it. The messenger had to have not only good physical shape, but also a good memory, and enjoy complete trust.

Postal routes were built, as a rule, running through existing trade routes; often the role of “postmen” were merchants, traders, and artisans who traveled to sell the products of their craft. This is how a well-established communication service “butchers’ mail” arose. They coordinated their routes with each other and delivered letters over long distances. A kind of “butchers’ post” existed in ancient Novgorod.

The structure of the Roman post was as follows: large stations were located at a distance of a day's travel, between them there were several intermediate ones where horses could be changed. On the larger ones one could spend the night, eat, and change the cart. Taxis Post, which began operating in the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation” In the 10th-13th centuries, it operated on the principle of a relay race - every 15 kilometers there was an intermediate station, where a horse-drawn courier was always ready. To deliver the mail faster, the courier blew his horn as he approached. Fast and reliable communications were especially needed during the numerous wars of the empire, when urgent delivery of orders and instructions was required. In addition to the emperor and his governors, Taxis mail began to be widely used by merchants, bankers and other business people. Thanks to this truly revolutionary idea, delivery of correspondence across half of Europe took only five and a half days.
The postal network developed under the leadership of the family spread throughout Western Europe over the course of a century. Until the end of the 18th century, horse-drawn couriers and Tourni-Taxis mail coaches served an area of ​​more than 200 thousand km 2 with 13 million inhabitants.

Zemstvo mail (a large network of local post offices existed in Tsarist Russia in the 19th century), field mail, railway mail, Arctic mail, balloon mail (hot air balloons were used), airplane mail, dog sled mail, sea mail, rocket mail (in 1959 year, a rocket was launched from the US Navy submarine “Barbero”, on which a special container for mail was placed instead of a warhead; in the 90s of the last century, similar launches were carried out from Russian submarines, however, this method of mail delivery is not widely used due to its high cost. cost) and others have been and are taking place in such an important matter as the delivery of information.

Pigeon mail

For more than 5,000 years, people have been using these birds as postal messengers, which have the amazing ability to return to their native roof even from afar. Pigeon mail was known in ancient Egypt. 2000 years ago in Baghdad, such a post served the most remote corners of the state. In the Middle Ages, when numerous kingdoms, principalities, and duchies arose, pigeons began to be used again. Dovecotes appeared at courts, kings and emperors received messages from their envoys from afar.

In many cases, winged couriers successfully replaced the most advanced technical means of communication, and in some cases they were the only means of transmitting information from the front line. During the war years, more than 15 thousand pigeongrams were delivered by carrier pigeons. The speed of flight of pigeons is used by doctors at an English clinic in Plymouth. It takes 25 minutes to transport test data to the hospital by car, but pigeons manage to deliver it in just 4 minutes. And this type of communication costs much less.

Message in a bottle

In the 17th-18th centuries in England there was a position of a royal uncorker of ocean bottles with letters. Anyone else who opened the bottles on their own faced the death penalty. A note or letter placed in a bottle is entrusted to the waves of the sea if there is no other means of communication, for example, in the event of a shipwreck. This is a very unreliable method: usually up to 90% of all abandoned bottles with letters remain in the sea. Sometimes these bottles go a long way. One bottle, for example, crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Newfoundland to Ireland. It took her only 33 days to do this.

“To the village to visit grandfather”

It's no secret even for the youngest user that any email address includes certain data, has its own clear format, which is divided into two components: the name of the user himself and the domain name (this is like the street or city in which we live, and which is indicated on the envelope when sending a letter by mail). In the old days, strange addresses were far from literary fiction. Before the advent of house numbering, postmen (and senders) had a hard time. In order for the letter to fall into the right hands, the address had to be indicated with all the details - such and such a floor, a right turn, etc.
In Costa Rica, all navigation and mail correspondence is still carried out according to descriptions like “150 meters west of McDonald's” or “200 meters on the left side of the church, red house with black bars.”

N. Gogol “The Inspector General”:
Korobkin (reads the address). To his honor, dear sovereign, Ivan Vasilyevich Tryapichkin, in St. Petersburg, on Pochtamskaya street, in the house number ninety-seven, turns to the courtyard, on the third floor to the right. Well, not an address, but some kind of “reprimant”!

Deliver to the street where the church wing at the end of Lombard Street faces.” Or “Give this letter in Moscow at the Novgorod courtyard of Safesky to the house of the solicitor Bogdan Neyolov, and give it to him, without detaining or getting into the hands of Fedot Tikhanovich.

• Recently, Yugoslav archaeologists found the oldest and heaviest love letter in Iran. It was not even written on a clay tablet, as was customary in those days, but carved on a stone weighing 16 kilograms. The letter dates back to 2200 BC. Although it is indecent to read other people's letters, archaeologists have deciphered the cuneiform text. In it, the young man Gamiza asks the girl Dasbuay for a date.

• The author of the longest letter is the Iranian Hossein Mohammad Dekhani, who once received a letter from his friend reproaching him for his long silence. Dekhani sat down to write the answer and wrote it for 13 months, 4 hours a day. A detailed story about life took 150 meters of paper and weighed 2 kilograms.

• There was even a post office in space station"World".

• On one of the islands of the Pacific state of Vanuatu, 50 meters from the coast there is an underwater postal station. Having purchased a special waterproof envelope in advance, divers can put the letter in the mailbox or give it to the postman on duty, sitting at the counter in diving equipment. Underwater mailboxes can also be found in Japan, Malaysia, the Bahamas and other resorts.

• In the vast expanses of the United States, far from cities, you can often find arrows made of concrete 25 meters long. These are the remains of an airmail navigation system built in the 1920s, when airplanes did not yet have radio communications. Pilots had to determine coordinates using landmarks, and in bad weather and at night it was impossible to fly at all. Therefore, thousands of searchlight lighthouses equipped with autonomous generators were built between the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Over time, the system lost its relevance, the towers were dismantled, and only concrete arrows serve as a reminder of its existence.

“My throne rests on four pillars, and my power rests on four people: an impeccable qadi (judge), an energetic chief of police, an active minister of finance and a wise postmaster who informs me of everything.”. These words belong to Caliph Abu Jefar Mansur, the Baghdad caliph who ruled in the 8th century.

However, the importance postal service rulers who lived long before Mansur understood perfectly well how to control their possessions and communicate with strangers.

Ancient Egypt Post

It is known that already in the 3rd millennium BC. the Egyptian pharaohs had a completely organized messenger service- both on foot and on horseback. Thanks to them, the ruler could transmit his orders to the farthest corners of the country, communicate with his fellow competitors, and also receive the necessary information about what was happening outside the capital. Messengers were the first to inform the pharaoh of riots or invasion of enemy troops.
How honorable the work of the walker was is unknown, but there were plenty of dangers, so before leaving on a long journey, the messenger necessarily bequeathed his property to his children - you never know...

Inca Postal Service

There were also walkers on the other side of the globe - primarily in the kingdom of the Great Inca. Indian postal service was called "chaski", and the messengers were divided into two categories: atun-chaski And churo-chasky. The former served and obeyed exclusively the supreme ruler, and the latter transmitted parcels and reports from everyone else.
Before the arrival of the pale-faced Indians, they did not know horses, and you couldn’t ride quickly on llamas. Therefore, the messengers traveled exclusively on foot. Although the Incas had roads, the mountainous terrain made it difficult to run long and fast along them. Therefore, there were checkpoints every 2-5 km. Out of breath on them messengers We waited for fresh hours to pick up a message or parcel and continue on our way. It is known that the five hundred kilometer road along which fish was delivered from the coast to the capital was covered in about two days.

If the assignment did not tolerate the slightest delay, the chaska announced his approach to the chukla by blowing a special horn. There were also rituals when delivering a message. If it was joyful, red ribbons were woven into the hair and a dagger was waved. But sad ones were recommended to be conveyed quietly, kneeling before the Great Inca.
Their messengers The Incas have been cooking since childhood. Training and strict punishments made chaskas hardy and resilient. The secrecy of correspondence was maintained very strictly.

Cieza de Leon, Chronicle of Peru:
“...those who lived at the postal stations conducted their affairs in such strict secrecy that, neither by request nor by threat, they never talked about what they were going to convey in the message, even if the notification had already gone further.”

True, messengers rarely lived to old age: after all, jogging in the morning is one thing, and racing at the limit of strength is another.

Nordic Post

As for the northern peoples, they have developed a very specific postal system - nomadic. For example, a northern aborigine is traveling on a reindeer sled, and on the way he meets another. If the oncoming person was traveling in the required direction, then a message was transmitted to him. If a feather was attached to the message, it meant: trouble has happened, drive the deer at full speed. And God forbid you attach this urgent “postage stamp” to an ordinary message - not a single decent person will communicate with you later.

Postal service of ancient Greece

Unlike Egypt and the Inca Empire, Ancient Greece was a kind of conglomerate of sovereign city-states (polises). Therefore, centralized regular postal service they didn't have. Each policy contained its own walkers, who were called " hemerodromes"("day messengers"). It is known that in an hour the hemerodrome could run 55 stages (about 10 km). It is not surprising that many messengers became winners of the ancient Olympics, and vice versa - Olympic medal-winning runners were hired to work as messengers.

Persian Post

But the eternal enemies of the ancient Greeks - the Persians - have regular postal service "hangarion"was established much better - largely thanks to King Cyrus II (VI century BC).

Efficiency Persian Post was determined by two conditions. The first was a well-equipped network of roads that led from the capital to the outskirts of Persia. The second is the presence on these roads postal stations with their managers. Usually the stations were distant from each other within a day's distance of a horse's run, and it was there that the messengers rested and changed horses.

For example, on the so-called "Tsar's Road" with a length of 2,500 km, there were 111 stations. And if a foot messenger could cover such a route in 90 days, then horsemen covered it in literally 6-8 days. The postal relay was actually around the clock - the message of the day messenger was immediately picked up at the station by the night messenger.

Similar system postal service later the Romans would create and improve them, but we will talk about them in a separate article.

It's no secret that world history is closely connected with the exchange of information - without this process the existence of human society is simply impossible. Communication plays a key role in such an exchange, that is, the transmission and reception of information using various technical means. In very ancient times, people did not have multi-core smartphones, so they used more primitive means: voice, sounds, fire, smoke and the like.

By the way, the word “mail” comes from the Polish “poczta” and the Italian “posta”. The latter, in turn, arose from “posta” and the Late Latin “posita”, which is most likely an abbreviation of “statio posita in...” - a stop, a station for variable horses, located in a certain place. Thus, the word originally meant a station for the exchange of post horses or couriers. The word "post" in the meaning of "mail" was first used in the 13th century.

Today, the word “Mail” refers to both a post office (post office, branch), a message, and the totality of received correspondence (letters, parcels).

The most interesting museum exhibitions about mail were, perhaps, in the Museum of Communications. A.S. Popov in St. Petersburg and in the Postal Museum in Ufa (about zero kilometer).

It’s me, postman Pechkin, who brought a parcel for your boy

Historians are of the opinion that the Russians adopted the structure of the postal service from the conquerors - the Mongols. Then postal stations appeared on the main roads (at a distance of 30 to 100 versts from each other) - “pits” where “yamchas” (messengers) changed horses. In turn, the words “yam” and “yamchi” come from two Tatar words - “dzyam” (road) and “yam-chi” (guide). This is where the word “coachman” came from, which was used to describe people involved in transporting people and goods on horse-drawn vehicles. Coachman, don’t chase horses...

The work of the messengers was subject to wear and tear (and were subject to harsh punishments in case of dishonest performance of duties or failure to deliver packages on time), so they tried to recruit stronger people into their ranks. For example, the first parcel from Ufa to Moscow (via Kazan) in 1639 took the horse messenger Grishka Pogorelsky as many as 70 days (possibly because he had out-of-date maps in his navigator). Try riding a horse for 70 days... but that’s only one way.

The word “postman” (by the way, also a borrowed word) in pre-revolutionary Russia began to be used in the postal business in 1716, and before that, employees who delivered mail were called “postmen.” At the same time, there were variations depending on the type of mail being distributed: non-resident mail was delivered by postmen, and city letters were delivered by letter carriers.

Peter I seriously upgraded the postal system with his reforms - it was under his rule that postal services in Russia appeared in all the main cities of the country. The post office became state-owned, the first post offices in Russia were created, post offices were opened in provincial cities, and the position of postmaster was introduced.

At the same time, a new uniform for postal employees was introduced: a dark green cloth caftan with a departmental emblem - a postal horn (to notify of its arrival) and a red eagle (the coat of arms meant that the postal worker is a civil servant and is under the tutelage and protection of the great brother). Later for filing sound signal they began to use the underbell bell.

By the end of the 18th century, the length of postal routes in Russia was no less than 33 thousand miles (here they suggest that it is 35204.4 kilometers).

By the way, since we’re talking about transport, we can’t help but mention the railway. The first mail carriages (between St. Petersburg and Moscow) began running in 1851.

Couverts and stamps

As now as before, free cheese was only in mousetraps and in cheeseburgers punched like hamburgers. To put it simply, sending letters was not a free pleasure.

Letters at that time were written on paper, which was then folded with the text inside. The address was indicated on the outside on the blank side, and the folding location was often sealed with sealing wax. Then the letter was taken to the post office, where the employee (after weighing the item and receiving money for sending it) stamped a special stamp. The resulting piece was called a “cover” (presumably from the English “to cover” - to close) and was a prototype of modern envelopes.

A stamp is a seal-type device used at the post office to receive (manual or mechanically) stamp impressions used to cancel postage marks, confirm receipt of postal items, control the route and time spent in transit, as well as apply any notes.

The volume of transfers was continuously growing, and soon such an imperfect method of payment very quickly became expensive, primarily for the service employees themselves. Therefore, to streamline the system of postal fees in 1845, the postal department carried out a number of reforms, among which was the introduction (first in St. Petersburg, and then in Moscow) of the first postal payment marks. This is how stamped envelopes appeared - the same envelopes, but with a stamp already printed on the front side. Initially, they were in circulation only within the city, but already in 1848, variants of different denominations appeared, including for nonresident correspondence.

Stamps

The stamp system was replaced by postage stamps - special signs, franking (a form of advance payment by the sender for postage and delivery of the postage) which indicates the fact of payment for the services of the department (forwarding and delivery of both domestic and international correspondence). Small and beautiful pieces of paper with a given value (face value) and a rich history.

It is believed that their inventor in 1837 was the Englishman Rowland Hill, whose mother worked at the post office and repeatedly talked about the difficulties of work, the shortcomings of the postal system and the high cost of payment. In response to this, Hill once put forward the idea of ​​​​a uniform postal rate (paid by the sender), releasing a pamphlet “Postal Reform, Its Importance and Expediency.” It was there that the appearance of stamps was envisaged: “ Perhaps this difficulty (of using stamped envelopes in certain cases) might be obviated by using a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp and covered at the back with a glutinous wash, which the bringer might, by the application of a little moisture , attach to the back of the letter, so as to avoid the necessity of re-directing it» (« Perhaps this difficulty (of using stamped envelopes in certain cases) can be eliminated by a piece of paper large enough to bear the stamp, and coated on the back with a thin layer of adhesive, which the sender can, with a little dampening, apply to the back. letters in order to avoid the need to redirect it."). A little later he became the author of the first stamp (“Black Penny”), and from there it went…

Stamps appeared in Russia a little later - in 1857 by A.P. Charulsky (an employee of the postal department) adopted foreign experience and proposed introducing a stamp system in our cold lands.

The first drafts of Russian postage stamps (submitted by F.M. Kepler on October 21, 1856) were rejected by Charulsky. Later, the senior engraver of the EZGB, Franz Mikhailovich Kepler, joined the stamp project - after reading Charukovsky’s feedback on the first samples, he began to make the first samples - from several options, one was chosen, which became the first postage stamp of Russia. Beautiful? ;)

The first stamps had to be cut out with scissors, although very soon they came to the conclusion that this was not the most convenient option. In 1847, Dublin Post Office employee Henry Archer proposed perforating, that is, punching through round holes around the entire perimeter of the stamp. But few people know that postage stamps are perforated not only to make it easier to separate stamps - the shape of the perforation and its size are also one of the ways to protect against counterfeiting.

Mailboxes

The advent of stamped envelopes simplified postage payments and made the presence of a postal official unnecessary. All this contributed to the rapid appearance of mailboxes (for collecting and storing letters) right on the city streets.

There were a huge variety of design options for mailboxes at different times - both street and “home”, and vandal-resistant, and even with devices for issuing stamps - many museums, as a rule, have entire collections of them.

War years

Civilian letters are one thing, but the need to exchange information during hostilities, when mail was in even greater demand, is quite another. Great Patriotic War made itself felt - the movement of millions of people caused a huge increase in the flow of postal exchange, which is why the post office (as well as telegraphs, about which a little later) worked around the clock, processing thousands of parcels daily. To understand the scale, in the Bashkir Republic alone (Ufa was an important component of the postal system of those times), more than 20 million letters were processed, sent and delivered in a timely manner during the war years.

By the way, letters and postcards addressed to the front were sent free of charge.

Nowadays

At the end of the last millennium, equipment and technology began to develop especially intensively; mobile connection and the Internet. High level the penetration of these technologies has significantly affected the nature of communications between people: the flow of simple written correspondence continues to decline.

But the residents of the country lost practically nothing (except for the joy of receiving a warm letter) - after all, paper mail was replaced by electronic mail. To transmit information, you don’t need to build a fire, have homing pigeons... and you don’t even need to know where the mailbox closest to your home is - you just need to get a phone/tablet/laptop anywhere in the city and be in touch. Any mailing address, instant sending and receiving letters, any file attachments, group correspondence, forwarding, sorting - yes, yes, that's all. Being thousands of kilometers from the office, I was aware of what was happening at work.

But once upon a time, sending only one way would have taken more than one day...
To be continued.

You have just finished reading the first article about the history of the development of communications, all the rest will be published on the pages

Voronov S.S.

Introduction

Every day, tens of thousands of letters, parcels, and parcels are delivered to people using the postal service. Mail helps people communicate on different parts of the world. In the modern world, in the era of the Internet and high-quality telephone communications, mail is losing its relevance, but still remains the main way of communication between people, and also plays a major role in sending parcels.

The modern idea of ​​mail is a little different from the idea that people had in the past. The Russian word “mail” comes from foreign words, the meaning of which can be roughly translated into Russian as – stop, station (where post horses were changed).

Mail is a type of communication and an institution (state in many countries) that transmits information in the form of postal items(written correspondence, periodicals, money transfers, parcels, parcels) using transport means (rail, road, sea, air).

Postal services developed differently among different nations, so different cultures had their own peculiarities of postal communication. But still, some parallels in history can be drawn.

Ancient times

At the beginning of the era of the emergence of man or in primitive times, an instrument of transmission important information served as voice communication. The main disadvantage of such communication was the inability to transmit information over long distances. To transmit signals over long distances in prehistoric times, primitive people began to use drums and fires.

Age of Great Empires

In the era of the Great Empires (or, as they used to call it, the era of antiquity), the main way of transmitting information was messengers and couriers. In a number of states (for example, the Roman Empire), postal services were state-owned and well established. In some countries, when delivering mail over long distances, messengers were sent on horseback. In ancient times, mail was mainly actively used by the leaders of empires or the nobility for rapid communication with remote provinces or for the transmission of quick messages.

Foot messengers in the service of the leadership, as a rule, were slaves and had to cover long distances in the shortest possible periods of time, thereby ensuring the efficiency of decision-making, both in peacetime and in wartime. The people involved in this craft were very well prepared physically.

Large eastern states (Egypt, Persia, China), due to the large extent of their territories and subject possessions, began to use pigeons as mail carriers. The birds were specially trained and raised, after which the concept of “carrier pigeon” arose. One of the main tasks of mail in large empires was the delivery of messages related to military purposes, and there were even separate services.

During excavations of various cities of ancient cultures, archaeologists found manuscripts, writings and other evidence that mail in those days had already begun to acquire the structure that it has in the modern world. Even then, rest stations that served as “post offices” were found. At these stations, the messengers changed horses and rested.

The Roman Empire made the greatest contribution to the development of postal services. Postal services were subordinated to the state, and postal transportation was carried out both by land and by sea. The emperors needed mail to communicate with all the provinces of the Roman Empire and was of great importance.

For the ordinary population in large empires, as a rule, there were no methods of delivering mail, because... mail, in the form in which it was, served for the benefit of emperors and nobility, so postal messages were delivered with the help of friends who traveled to other cities, provinces, and countries on business.

Middle Ages

Europe

The Middle Ages is known as the era of numerous wars, military campaigns, the strengthening of the role of the church, but at the same time as the era of technological progress.

In some European countries, after the fall of the Roman Empire, they tried to recreate the state post office, but all attempts did not lead to a positive result. The nobility carried out postal transportation with the help of their subjects (messengers, couriers, drivers).

Because The role of the church in medieval Europe increased and churches united around one main church in Rome, then a monastic post arose. the main task was to maintain contact between European churches, monastic orders, numerous brotherhoods and the main church. There is no mention in history of a separate service in the church dealing with postal forwarding, but the fact of active communication between churches is confirmed by archaeologists with the help of monastic couriers.

With the advent of science-based universities, there has been a need for communication between them, as well as between students and each other and their families. A university post office emerged as a separate service, and messengers involved in the delivery of postal messages even had certain privileges.

The development of crafts, trade, science, and culture in Europe led to the development of postal relations, because people needed to quickly resolve emerging issues, and there was still no state postal service. This led to the emergence of messenger or courier services, and city post offices began to emerge, facilitating communication between artisans, merchants, scientists, artists, musicians, etc. After some time, ordinary people began to use the emerging services.

Then the institutions of city messengers arose. At this time, the concept of paying for the delivery of letters, parcels, etc. was born. at a certain rate. The services of such institutions were used by both nobles, government administrators, and ordinary people. Some city institutions even then began to become famous for the accuracy of the delivery time of postal messages.

Centralized mail, which worked for the needs of the state and dealt only with state postal forwarding, began to emerge in the 15th century in France.

Asia

After the fall of the Roman Empire, unlike Europe, a well-organized postal service almost immediately emerged in Asian countries with already functioning postal relations. The postal services were used by the nobility, but the lower strata of the population also received limited access. Postal couriers had insignia (yellow ribbons) so that they could be recognized from afar.

South and North America

According to archaeologists, Indian tribes such as the Incas, Aztecs and others also had a system for delivering postal messages using couriers. The couriers were runners who quickly covered long distances. At a certain distance from each other there were “post houses”, where one of the couriers passed a message to another and could stay to rest. Postal parcels were also delivered in this way. The number of postal houses and couriers themselves was very large. Postal messages were transmitted both in written and oral form.

XVI–XIX centuries

During this period of time, a system of centralized royal mail arose in the most developed countries of Europe (France, England, etc.). The idea and the first steps to recognize mail as a monopoly and a state responsibility were implemented in Germany in the 17th century. And with the beginning of industrial growth, the process of organizing fast postal services only accelerated; many states secured postal services. Almost all segments of the population could afford to use postal services. For transportation within countries, special mail coaches were often used. The transport of passengers was also considered postal transport.

A radical revolution in shipping occurred with the advent of steam engines, which were introduced on ships and trains. The mail delivery process has become significantly faster. All postal communications became available to all segments of the population and were carried out with almost all the most remote corners of the country; international relations also reached a new level.

In the 19th century, an envelope, a postage stamp, and parcels were invented. The post office began to acquire the organization of work that it has in modern times.

The expansion of rail and steamship transportation meant that a letter could travel across the entire globe in 80 days. Postal transportation gained popularity and post offices began to appear in almost every village. Post offices themselves also evolved and began to provide new services and operations to customers.

IN late XIX century, the telegraph was invented, radio, telephone and some functions of postal communication began to lose their relevance, but, nevertheless, mail did not lose its relevance.

Postage stamps also began to gain relevance as works of art.

In the 19th century, the Universal Postal Union was formed, which included many different countries.

The modern postal network provides postal services throughout the country, including all cities and rural areas. The full range of services provided by the post office has become enormous.