A Short History of Correspondence

500BC
Early developments in letter writing have been attributed to Queen Atossa of Persia. Primarily used as a tool for middle eastern rulers to communicate with Pharos.

1516
Two millennia pass before King Henry VIII established The Royal Mail, the world's first public mail service, in response to a generational rise in literacy and trade.

1714
English engineer Henry Mill was granted a patent for a "Machine for Transcribing Letters", an early concept for a typewriter, eventually resulting in the greatly increased speed of letter writing.

1840
Postal pricing was complex, based on distance, the number of sheets in the letter and was paid for by the recipient. In need of standardisation the postage stamp was invented, featuring its first head of state, Queen Victoria.

Introduced at the end of the Industrial Revolution, stamps facilitated more reliable communication, in both the growth of business and personal correspondence over geographical distance.

Visually, postage stamps became a form of cultural and national expression, carrying images and symbols that reflected the identity of nations.

1971
Over 2500 years after Atossa developed letter writing, Ray Tomlinson, an American computer scientist invented email. Presumably with a nod to her great-great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II became the first head of state to send one.

1989
18 years after email's conception, English computer scientist, Sir Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web - The digital age of communication had begun, marking the beginning of the end of the posted letter.

This project is a celebration of letter writing and the dying miniature art form of the postage stamp.