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Challenging The Convention

Trade Cross-border Shipping

Ship & Cargo Fleet Captains

Numeral Adhesive Stamped

Priority Airmail Distribution?

Truck Delivering 932 Tonnes

72M Wrapping Paper Glued 

Estimated Timing Distances

Forwarding $4 Cost Speedy

Express Overnight Finessed

Rolled Large Item Tumbles

Please Don’t Fold The Edge

Superb Airport Traffic Hub

Post Administration Feeds

Envelope With 3491 Items

Standard Sealed Package

Only Cartonnage Please! 

Cardboard Box Clippings

Pour Tous Services Livraison

Dépêche Immédiate Urgence

Rapidité Colis Vers l’Europe

Max Arrivée Immédiatement

Prioritaire Par Avion Global

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Ruban Adhésif 50m Solide

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Gesamtgewicht Karton 421 kg

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Gefahrgut! Wichtige Papiere

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Briefwechsel Raum System

2 Rücksendungen Options

Rollgut Abgerufen Schnell

Filiera Trasporto Marittimo Pro

Consegna Più Veloce Subito

Inoltro Veloce e Sicuro (1819)

Costo di Spedizione Stimato

Stesso GIORNO Lettera (TP)

Pacchetto Speciale Elegante

Carta Grana Grossa Qualità

Fondamento Infra Completo

A1, Prima Della Spedizione

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Postal services have undergone a radical transformation, evolving from traditional methods of delivery to advanced, tech-driven systems that make sending and receiving goods more efficient, reliable, and accessible than ever before. What was once a slow, manual process now thrives with cutting-edge technology, enhancing every step from collection to delivery. The digital revolution has not only changed how we track packages but how we interact with the delivery system itself. With the introduction of real-time tracking, customers are empowered to see their parcels’ journey in minute detail, ensuring peace of mind every step of the way. This level of visibility has brought about a paradigm shift, as consumers and businesses alike now expect a level of transparency and accountability that was once unheard of in the shipping industry. As technology continues to advance, so too do the methods used by postal services to ensure that goods are delivered with the utmost speed and accuracy. Today, delivery services extend beyond the simple task of moving items from point A to point B. The advent of automated sorting facilities, smart routing systems, and even drone deliveries has reshaped the logistics landscape. What was once a drawn-out wait for a package can now be a matter of hours, as goods move swiftly through advanced networks that optimize every route. Whether it's a rush order, a late-night request, or a global shipment, these services cater to a world that demands instant gratification and high reliability. The integration of machine learning algorithms has allowed these systems to continually improve, making delivery times shorter and more predictable with each passing year. Through these intelligent systems, delivery companies are now able to anticipate potential delays and dynamically adjust their operations in real time, reducing the impact of unforeseen obstacles and further enhancing the customer experience. These new systems are not just about speed, but also about flexibility and personalization. Delivery methods have expanded, with options ranging from same-day delivery to specialized services tailored to customer needs. Subscription models allow businesses and individuals to streamline their shipments, ensuring that their regular deliveries arrive on time and in perfect condition. These subscriptions have evolved into customizable packages, where customers can select their preferred delivery times, frequency, and even packaging types, all to suit their specific requirements. Beyond the convenience of speed and tracking, postal services have also embraced sustainable solutions to reduce their environmental impact. The rise of eco-friendly packaging materials, carbon-neutral shipping options, and electric delivery vehicles has led to a significant reduction in emissions. Many companies are now investing in green logistics, implementing initiatives such as biodegradable packing materials, optimized delivery routes to reduce fuel consumption, and partnerships with carbon offset programs. Consumers are increasingly choosing services that align with their environmental values, pushing the industry further toward sustainability. This shift not only benefits the planet but also strengthens customer loyalty, as businesses that prioritize eco-conscious shipping gain a competitive edge. Artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT) have further revolutionized postal services, introducing innovations such as smart lockers, autonomous delivery robots, and predictive analytics. Smart lockers provide secure, 24/7 access to parcels, eliminating the need for missed deliveries and long wait times. Autonomous robots and drones are being deployed in urban and rural areas alike, ensuring rapid, contactless delivery that enhances efficiency. Predictive analytics use vast amounts of data to anticipate customer behaviors, allowing companies to prepare for peak demand periods and avoid bottlenecks. With each advancement, delivery services become more streamlined, personalized, and intelligent, making it easier than ever to send and receive goods anywhere in the world. Looking ahead, the future of postal services is poised for even more dramatic changes. The integration of blockchain technology may soon bring an unprecedented level of security and traceability to shipments, ensuring that every package’s journey is logged in a tamper-proof digital ledger. AI-driven customer support systems are expected to further enhance user experience by providing real-time updates, assistance, and automated problem resolution. Meanwhile, hyperloop transportation and other next-generation logistics solutions may drastically cut transit times, making even international shipping as fast and seamless as local deliveries. As these innovations continue to shape the industry, postal services will not only keep pace with the modern world but also define the future of global logistics. What was once a slow, labor-intensive industry has now become a high-tech powerhouse of efficiency, precision, and customer-centric service. As postal services continue to evolve, they will remain an essential part of daily life, connecting people and businesses with ever-increasing speed, intelligence, and sustainability. The transformation of mail and parcel delivery is far from over—it is an ongoing revolution that will continue to redefine the way we send, receive, and experience goods in the digital age.

→ Post Office, Mailbox, Address, Fragile; ← Stamp, ↗ Enveloped, Delivery, Courier, ↑Freight, Sorting Center, Tracking Number, Registered Mail, Priority Mail, Express Delivery, Return Address, Air Mail, Certified Mail, Postmark, Shipping Label, Zip Code, Package, Mail Carrier, Drop Box, Postal Code, Bulk Mail, Address Label, Delivery Confirmation, Mailbag, Postal Route, First-Class Mail

Something of the old romance of the service lingers about the Travelling Post Office. To those who work it there is always a possibility of adventure, not to mention the risk to life and limb, while to those who watch its operations there is that indefinable element which makes an appeal to the imagination. Moreover, in more than one of its features it links up our time with the old mail coach days. There are pictures in existence of the mail coach passing through a village or hamlet, and the mail bag is being handed out from the upper windows of the local post office to the guard of the coach. The driver is reducing his speed while the exchange is taking place, and the suggestion of the picture is that no time is to be lost. The same idea is carried out to-day by means of mechanical appliances. Indeed, so soon as the mail train came into being, the minds of officials were at once exercised how to maintain the old system of exchange under altered conditions. The early effects were scarcely ingenious, and were obviously dangerous. The experiment was tried of hoisting up the bags towards the railway guards on long poles, but after one guard had had his eye poked out, and others had suffered from severe falls while endeavouring to secure the bags, it was felt that the business placed too severe a strain on human endeavour. Under this clumsy arrangement it was necessary for the train to reduce its speed, and it was not only, I am afraid, to preserve the guards from injury, but also to prevent delay during the process of exchange, that the efforts of inventors were directed. But before I proceed to describe the ingenious apparatus which is in operation to-day, and which is on practically the same lines as that invented more than seventy years ago, I must deal with the Travelling Post Office itself. As early as 1837, when railways were yet in their infancy, it was suggested to the Post Office by Frederick Karstadt, a son of one of the surveyors of the Department, that much time would be saved if some of the necessary business of sorting and preparation for delivery of letters were performed on the train. On the 6th January 1838, a carriage was run as an experiment on the railway between Birmingham and Liverpool. The carriage used for the purpose was simply a horse-box temporarily fitted up as a sorting office. The experiment was decided to be a success, not only by officials, but by the press and the public. In the words of an enthusiastic writer at the time, “Here is a specimen of the exhaustless ingenuity which bids fair to annihilate time and space, an improvement which enables the Post Office to work practically double tides—in other words, to duplicate time by travelling and working at the same instant.” We smile at writing of this kind in these days, when the familiarity of the operations has robbed us of all sense of wonder, but the language is not very different from what we frequently hear to-day when the achievements of the aeroplane or wireless telegraphy are recorded. To our grandfathers the Travelling Post Office was a miracle of the day, and it is not difficult, if we know the social life of 71that time, to understand the way in which they must have speculated on its possibilities.

It is often brought as a reproach against the General Post Office that while it occasionally fails to deliver a letter which is only slightly incorrect in its address, it frequently succeeds if the address is entirely wrong or is more or less unintelligible to the average reader. But Post Office men and women have the ordinary human point of view, and we must not blame them for sometimes despising the solution of simple difficulties and laying themselves out to solve the larger problems of official life. Like Naaman, they prefer to be asked to do some great thing. For one reason, both their chiefs and the public will give them more credit for solving an apparently hopeless puzzle than for suggesting a way out of an easy difficulty. They may have in the one case a paragraph all to themselves in the Daily Mail: in the other case they will not even be thanked by the man who receives the letter, and who is not modest enough to be surprised because he is known to the Post Office in spite of an imperfect address. None the less, the failure of the Post Office to deliver a letter often means a loss of self-respect to the member of the Department whose duty it is to find an owner for the packet, and he will make great efforts to save his reputation. The Department which deals with the undelivered letters is called the Returned Letter Office, but the older 109and more striking name was the Dead Letter Office. This name, however, gave rise to some misunderstanding on the part of the simple-minded British public. Many thought that this office was a place where they could learn all about dead and missing friends and relatives. Descriptions were frequently sent as to the age and appearance of lost fathers, husbands, uncles, &c. For instance, information was required of the whereabouts of “R--, a carpenter by trade, 5 feet 10½, blue eyes, brown hare, and a cut on the forreid, a lump on the smorle of his back, and no whiskers.” A lady wrote this letter: “To the Dead Office Post Office, London. I, the mother of Michael Roach, beg leave to write to you trusting that you will kindly send me the necessary information regarding the death of my son, and if dead you as a gentleman will kindly send me an answer to this, whether dead or living.” Other folk who are influenced by superstitious considerations disliked the gruesome suggestiveness of the title. Hence this letter: “To the Dead Letter Office. If any of my letters should come to your office that I have not sent since the last, will you be so kind as to burn them and never send them back to me. After that one came, as many as 21 persons have died and been buried in this little place, and I don't know what will be the end of it. I think this will be my last.” Communications of this nature may have brought about the change in name, but I am inclined to think that this was induced by the reluctance of the staff to admit the deadness of any postal packet which passed through their hands. At one time there were Dead Letter Offices only in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, but now the chief towns in the Kingdom have their own Returned Letter Offices, and they deal with the business in their own districts. 110Our first thought will probably be that the work of these offices must be of a somewhat simple character, but this idea will not survive many minutes' consideration. A large proportion of the letters are found to contain enclosures of varying value which require special treatment. Among them are bank notes, cheques, bills of exchange, letters of credit, circular notes, dividend warrants, money and postal orders, stamps, jewellery, and countless articles of value. All these different items have to be accounted for, and care taken that none but the rightful owners shall possess them.

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The Buffalo Post-office was kept, during Mr. Granger’s term of office, first on Main Street, near where the Metropolitan Theater now stands, and afterwards in the brick house on the west side of Pearl Street, a few doors south of Swan Street, now No. 58 Pearl Street. Mr. Guiteau first kept the office on Main Street, opposite Stevenson’s livery stable; then on the west side of Main Street about the middle of the block next south of Erie Street; and afterwards on the northwest corner of Ellicott Square. It was kept in the same place for a short period at the commencement of Judge Russel’s term of office, but was soon removed to the northwest corner of the next block above, where it remained until after the appointment of Mr. Dibble. It was removed by Mr. Dibble about 1836, to the old Baptist Church then standing on the corner where the post-office is now kept, and it was kept in that building until after Mr. Haddock took the office. He removed the office to the northwest corner of Main and Seneca Streets, where it remained until it was removed, in August, 1858, into the Government building in which it is now. No very satisfactory account of the origin and progress of the Postal Service of the country, in its more immediate connection with the local history of Buffalo, can now be compiled. The early records of the transportation service of the Post-Office Department, were originally meager and imperfect; and many of the books and papers of the Department, prior to 1837, were destroyed or lost when the public edifices at Washington were burned in 1814, and also when the building in which the Department was kept was destroyed by fire, in December, 1836. For these reasons the Hon. A. N. Zevely, Third Assistant Postmaster-General—who has kindly furnished extracts from the records and papers of the Department—has been able to afford but little information in respect to the early transportation of the mails in the western part of this State. Indeed, no information in respect to that service, prior to 1814, could be given; no route-books of older date than 1820 are now in the Department, and those from 1820 to 1835 are not so arranged as to show the running time on the several routes. The records of the Appointment Office, and those of the Auditor's Office of the Department, are more full and perfect; and from these, and from various other sources of information, much that is deemed entirely reliable and not wholly uninteresting has been obtained. Erastus Granger was the first Postmaster of Buffalo—or rather of "Buffalo Creek," the original name of the office. He was appointed on the first establishment of the office, September 30, 1804. At that time the nearest post-offices were at Batavia on the east, Erie on the west, and Niagara on the north. Mr. Granger was a second cousin of Hon. Gideon Granger, the fourth Postmaster-General of the United States, who held that office from 1801 to 1814. The successors of our first Postmaster, and the dates of their respective appointments, appear in the following statement. The aggregate amount of the postage received at the different post-offices must always depend, in a greater or less degree, upon the extent and frequency of the mail transportation by which such offices are supplied, and the rates of postage charged, as well as upon the number, education, character and occupation of the population within the delivery of such offices. Other causes, some of them local or temporary, may at times affect the revenue of an office, but only the population of the neighborhood, the frequency and extent of the transportation service, and the general rates of letter postage, will be here considered. The first census under the authority of the United States was taken in 1790; probably in July and August of that year. In that portion of New York lying west of the old Massachusetts preëmption line it was taken by General Amos Hall, as Deputy Marshal, and an abstract of his list or census-roll is given in Turner's "History of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase." The number of heads of families then residing west of Genesee River, and named in that list, was 24; but it is probable that the deputy marshal did not visit this locality, as neither Winney the Indian trader, nor Johnston the Indian agent and interpreter, is named; although it is probable that both of them resided here. Winney, it is quite certain, was here in 1791, and it is supposed came about 1784. The whole population west of the Massachusetts preëmption line, which was a line drawn due north and south across the State, passing through Seneca Lake and about two miles east of Geneva, as given by Turner from General Hall's census-roll, was 1,084, as follows: males, 728; females, 340; free blacks, 7; slaves, 9. In the State census report of 1853, the population of Ontario County in 1790 (which county then embraced all that territory) is stated at 1,075. The difference between the two statements is caused by the omission of the slaves from the latter statement. In 1800 the population of the same territory (then the Counties of Ontario and Steuben) was 15,359 free persons and 79 slaves.

Abbreviate

At least as early as January, 1690, there was what was called a public post between Boston and New York, and in 1691 there was a post of some kind from New York to Virginia, and from New York to Albany. This was during the war with the French, and these posts were probably established by the military authorities. On the 4th of April, 1692, Thomas Neele, having obtained a patent to establish post-offices throughout the American colonies, appointed Andrew Hamilton (afterwards Governor of New Jersey), his deputy for all the plantations. Mr. Deputy Hamilton brought the subject before Gov. Fletcher and the New York Colonial Assembly in October following, and an Act was immediately passed for encouraging a post-office. In 1705 Lord Cornbury, the Governor of New York, informed the Lords of Trade of the passage by the New York Assembly of an Act for enforcing and continuing a post-office, which he recommended His Majesty to confirm as an act of necessity, without which the post to Boston and Philadelphia would be lost. In 1710 the British Parliament passed an Act authorizing the British Postmaster-General to keep one chief letter-office in New York and other chief letter-offices in each of His Majesty’s Provinces or Colonies in America. Deputy Postmasters-General for North America were afterwards, and from time to time, appointed by the British Postmaster-General in England. Dr. Franklin was appointed to that office in 1755, and it is said that in 1760 he startled the people of the colonies by proposing to run a "stage waggon" from Boston to Philadelphia once a week, starting for each city on Monday morning and reaching the other by Saturday. In 1763 he spent five months in traveling through the Northern Colonies for the purpose of inspecting and improving the post-offices and the mail service. He went as far east as New Hampshire, and the whole extent of his five months' tour, in going and returning, was about sixteen hundred miles. He made such improvements in the service as to enable the citizens of Philadelphia to write to Boston and get replies in three weeks instead of six weeks, the time previously required. In 1774 Dr. Franklin was removed from office; and on the 25th of December, 1775, the Secretary of the General Post-Office gave notice that, in consequence of the Provincial Congress of Maryland having passed a resolution that the Parliamentary post should not be permitted to travel on a pass through that province, and of the seizure of the mails at Baltimore and Philadelphia, the Deputy Postmaster-General was "obliged, for the present, to stop all the posts." It is supposed that this terminated the regular mail service in the old Thirteen Colonies, and that it was never resumed under British management. Before this suspension of the Parliamentary posts, Mr. William Godard of Baltimore had proposed to establish "an American Post-office"; and in July, 1774, he announced that his proposals had been warmly and generously patronized by the friends of freedom, and that postmasters and riders were engaged. During the preceding six months he had visited several of the colonies in order to extend and perfect his arrangements, and there appears to have been a very general disposition to abandon the use of the British post and sustain that established by Mr. Godard. In May, 1775, Mr. Godard had thirty postmasters, but Mr. John Holt of New York City was the only one in this State. In that year partial arrangements for mail service in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Massachusetts were made by the Provincial Congress of each of those Colonies. The old Continental Congress first assembled in September, 1774; and on the 26th of July, 1775, it resolved "that a Postmaster-General should be appointed for the United Colonies who should hold his office at Philadelphia and be allowed a salary of $1,000 for himself and $340 for his secretary and comptroller; and that a line of posts should be appointed, under the direction of the Postmaster-General, from Falmouth, in New England, to Savannah, in Georgia." Dr. Franklin was then unanimously chosen Postmaster-General. The ledger in which he kept the accounts of his office is now in the Post-office Department. It is a half-bound book of rather more than foolscap size, and about three-fourths of an inch thick, and many of the entries are in Dr. Franklin's own handwriting. Richard Bache succeeded Dr. Franklin November 7, 1776, and Mr. Bache was succeeded by Ebenezer Hazard. The Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1778, gave to the United States, in Congress assembled, "the sole and extensive right and power of establishing and regulating post-offices from one State to another"; but the increase of mail service was comparatively trifling until after the organization of the Post-office Department by the first Congress which assembled under the Constitution of the United States. This gave it efficiency and value, and provided for the early extension of its benefits to the inhabitants of the several States. The National Congress, organized under the Constitution, commenced its first session on the 4th of March, 1789, but it was not until September 22, 1790, that an Act was passed for establishing, or rather continuing, the postal service. The Act then passed provided that a Postmaster-General should be appointed, and that the regulations of the Post-office should be the same as they last were under the resolutions and ordinances of the Congress of the Confederation. In 1790 there were but seventy-five post-offices and 1,875 miles of post-roads in the United States, and the whole amount of postages received for that year was $37,935. The population of the United States, as shown by the census of that year, was only 3,929,827; and the whole mail service was performed upon our seaboard line, passing through the principal towns from Wiscassett in Maine, to Savannah in Georgia, and upon a few cross or intersecting lines, on many portions of which the mail was carried only once a fortnight. On the 3d of March, 1791, the Postmaster-General was authorized to extend the carrying of the mail from Albany to Bennington, Vermont. It is probable that the post-office at Albany was a special office until late in that year, as in an official list of post-offices, with their receipts for the year ending October 5, 1791, New York is the only office in this State; and by an official statement dated April 24, 1790, it appears that the contractor from Albany to New York received the postages for carrying the mail, and that that was the only mail service in this State north or west of New York City. It is stated in a "History of Oneida County" that the first mail to Utica was brought by Simeon Post in 1793, under an arrangement with the Post-office Department authorizing its transportation from Canajoharie to Whitestown at the expense of the inhabitants on the route; and that in 1793 or 1794, the remarkable fact that the Great Western Mail, on one arrival at Fort Schuyler (Utica), contained six letters for that place, was heralded from one end of the settlement to the other. It is added that some were incredulous, but the solemn and repeated assurances of the veracious Dutch postmaster at last obtained general credence.

The large central hall facing the main entrance to the building is set apart for the circulation of telegrams received from the various branch offices connected with the Central Office by pneumatic tube, and in the reverse directions for delivery from these offices. A large staff of telegraphists is engaged upon this work. The pneumatic tubes used for forwarding and receiving telegrams to and from certain branch offices in the city, western central, and western district offices, and so obviating telegraphic transmissions, are led into this hall. These tubes are laid at the depth of about two feet underground. They extend as far distant as Billingsgate on the eastern side, House of Commons and West Strand on the south-western side, and the western district office on the western side, and allow of the rapid collection and distribution of telegrams over a very busy area. The tubes make the various offices arms practically of the Central Station so far as telegrams are concerned. The message forms are enclosed in gutta-percha carriers covered with felt, and having attached to their forward ends a number of felt discs which exactly fit the internal circumference of the tubes and prevent any escape of air around them. An elastic band at the mouth of the carrier prevents the messages from escaping. The outgoing carriers containing the messages are propelled through the tubes from the Central Office by forcing compressed air into the tubes behind them at a pressure of about 10 lbs. to the square inch, the incoming carriers being drawn through by vacuum, so that the normal atmosphere exerts behind them a pressure of about 7 lbs. to the square inch.

Specification 35

Henrik Ibsen

Thomas Huxley

Leo Tolstoy

Charles Darwin

Ernest Haeckel

Louise Michel

Maxim Gorky

Walt Whitman

Robert Ingersoll

Élisée Reclus

Thomas Paine

Victor Hugo

Émile Zola

August Comte

Baruch Spinoza

Wendell Phillips

Harriet Martineau

Giordano Bruno

Henry George

Henry Thoreau

Mrs. Stanton

At any rate, let us not overrate the productivity of the exporting countries, and let us remember that the vine-growers of Southern Europe drink themselves an abominable piquette; that Marseilles fabricates wine for home use out of dry raisins brought from Asia; and that the Normandy peasant who sends his apples to London, drinks real cider only on great festivities. Such a state of things will not last for ever; and the day is not far when we shall be compelled to look to our own resources to provide many of the things which we now import. And we shall not be the worse for that. The resources of science, both in enlarging the circle of our production and in new discoveries, are inexhaustible. And each new branch of activity calls into existence more and more new branches, which steadily increase the power of man over the forces of nature.

Another very important centre of petty trades is the French Jura, or the French part of the Jura Mountains, where the watch trade has attained, as known, a high development. When I visited these villages between the Swiss frontier and Besançon in the year 1878, I was struck by the high degree of relative well-being which I could observe, even though I was perfectly well acquainted with the Swiss villages in the Val de Saint Imier. It is very probable that the machine-made watches have brought about a crisis in French watch-making as they have in Switzerland. But it is known that part, at least, of the Swiss watch-makers have strenuously fought against the necessity of being enrolled in the factories, and that while watch factories grew up at Geneva and elsewhere, considerable numbers of the watch-makers have taken to divers other trades which continue to be carried on as domestic or small industries. I must only add that in the French Jura great numbers of watch-makers were at the same time owners of their houses and gardens, very often of bits of fields, and especially of communal meadows, and that the communal fruitières, or creameries, for the common sale of butter and cheese, are widely spread in that part of France. So far as I could ascertain, the development of the machine-made watch industry has not destroyed the small industries of the Jura hills. The watch-makers have taken to new branches, and, as in Switzerland, they have created various new industries. From Ardouin Dumazet’s travels we can, at anyrate, borrow an insight into the present state of the southern part of this region. In the neighbourhoods of Nantua and Cluses silks are woven in nearly all villages, the peasants giving to weaving their spare time from agriculture, while quite a number of small workshops (mostly less than twenty looms, one of 100 looms) are scattered in the little villages, on the streamlets running from the hills. Scores of small saw-mills have also been built along the streamlet Merloz, for the fabrication of all sorts of little pretty things in wood. At Oyonnax, a small town on the Ain, we have a big centre for the fabrication of combs, an industry more than 200 years old, which took a new development since the last war through the invention of celluloid. No less than 100 or 120 “masters” employ from two to fifteen workers each, while over 1,200 persons work in their houses, making combs out of Irish horn and French celluloid. Wheel-power was formerly rented in small workshops, but electricity, generated by a waterfall, has lately been introduced, and is now distributed in the houses for bringing into motion small motors of from one-quarter to twelve horse-power. And it is remarkable to notice that as soon as electricity gave the possibility to return to domestic work, 300 workers left at once the small workshops and took to work in their houses. Most of these workers have their own cottages and gardens, and they show a very interesting spirit of association. They have also erected four workshops for making cardboard boxes, and their production is valued at 2,000,000 fr. every year.

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