EOTO #1 The Postal Service

                                                                          The Postal Service

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,”  is the United States Postal Service, USPS motto, dating back to our country's beginnings there has Postal Service. But not many people know the origin of the Postal Service and how it has evolved and advanced along with the country through time.

Going all the way back nine thousand five hundred years to Mesopotamia using clay tokens were used as letters by people they would include lines and dots carved into the tokens to send messages. Along with clay tokens, there were ballue, envelopes during the Mesopotamia era. Which lead to tons of people writing letters to one another the clay tokens used to be really only used for goods between merchants.  

Throughout history following Mesopotamia, you can see many examples of postal services from Egypt to ancient China to the Persian Empire and a great example of this is the Silk Road. An example of the modern postal service you would have to look at France, specifically Paris, France in 1653 to Jean-Jacques Renouard de Villayer who set up and established an array of postboxes throughout Paris. Villayer would drop off letters inside the postboxes but only if they utilized pre-paid envelopes which he sold. To keep track of the pre-paid envelopes he would use receipts which were called billet de port payé and they are deemed to be an early precursor of the postage stamp. But the birth of the modern mail system in the previous century King Henry VII organized the Master Of The Post but it was primarily only used to carry letters between the King and the Court.

Then in 1635 Charles 1 opened the Master of the Post to the public and it was used in the colonies. Benjamin Franklin is considered to be the father of the postal service, but like many other colonists Franklin worked for Britain's colonial mail service from 1753 to 1754, in fact, he oversaw the whole service and improved the service too.  He was able to connect the 13 colonies and the mail service was able to speed delivers connecting Philadelphia to New York in just a mere 33 hours. The efficiency of the mail service that Franklin designed and ran helped prove that the colonies can operate without the help of Great Britain.  

In 1775, Franklin was fired from Britain's colonial mail service because of his ties to the revolution. Franklin and his patriot allies created their own version of the mail system using a similar system to what Franklin had designed for the British. They used underground networks to transport mail such as the Declaration Of Independence. This mail system was first named the Committees of Correspondence but then it was later renamed the Constitutional Post. Then with help from James Madison and others, the Constitutional Post expanded, and by 1831 the United States boasted twice as many post offices as Britain and five times as many as France. 

As the country expanded westward the Pony Express would deliver mail out west because the train tracks only went as far as Missouri. The Pony Express helped shape The Wild West with the fastest delivery being Lincoln's inaugural address it was delivered in 7 days and 17 hours. The Pony Express helped pave

the way for the transcontinental railroad and telegraph. But it was short-lived, 18 months to be exact because of the telegraph and people stopped using the riders. 

 

Jumping to 1870, to be exact September 23,1870  the first airmail by a hot air balloon but it is unknown if the balloon and its 500 pounds of mail ever made it to its destination. Now jump about 40 years to the Wright Brothers who successfully flew in 1903 mail wasn't delivered by air till the end of World War 1 but the mail was already being delivered via ground transportation similar to how it is today. 

Now across the country, the United States has over 40,000 post offices. USPS delivers more than 200 billion pieces of mail each year and they deliver to over 144 million businesses and houses across the States but they also deliver to Guam, the American Virgin Islands,  Puerto Rico, and American Samoa. The United States Postal Service employs nearly 500,000 career workers who deliver mail no matter the weather and just like throughout its history they deliver the mail in many different ways.