During the Qin and Han Dynasties, a whole set of postal system was formed. Especially in the Han Dynasty, the instruments passed were divided into grades, and the instruments of different grades were to be passed by special persons and horses in the prescribed order and time. Sending and receiving these documents should be registered, indicating the time, in order to clarify the responsibility.
Sui-Tang period, the stagecoach business has been unprecedented development. Tang Dynasty official postal traffic lines to the capital Chang'an as the center, to the four sides of the radiation, straight to the border areas, roughly 30 miles to set up a post station. According to the "six canons of the Tang Dynasty", there were 1,639 post stations in the country at its peak, and more than 20,000 people specializing in postal service, including 17,000 postal soldiers. Postal stations were divided into three kinds: land, water, and both waterways, and each station was equipped with a post house with post horses, donkeys, post boats, and post fields.
The Tang Dynasty also had express provisions for the journey of the post, the land post fast horse a day to go 6 post that is 180 miles, and then soon to travel 300 miles a day, the fastest requirement of 500 miles a day; walking staff 50 miles a day; against the water boat, river 40 miles, river 50 miles, the other 60 miles; along the water, all the provisions of the 100 to 150 miles. The poet Cen Sen wrote in his poem "On the Way to Longshan, Presenting Judge Ziwen", "A stage passes a stage, and the stagecoach is like a stream of stars; at the same time, it sends out to Xianyang, and the curtain reaches the head of Longshan Mountain". Here he compared the stagecoaches to shooting stars. On the 9th day of the 11th month of the 14th year of Tianbao, An Lushan rebelled in Fanyang. At that time, Tang Xuanzong is Huaqing Palace, the two places are separated by three thousand miles, within six days Tang Xuanzong knew the news, the transmission speed of 500 miles per day. This shows that the organization and speed of postal communication in the Tang Dynasty had reached a very high level.
The story of the transmission of information in ancient and modern times
Beacon fire
In ancient China, in order to transmit military information, people once set up beacon towers, using fire and smoke to transmit information. Beacons burned wolf dung during the day and lit firewood at night. Legend has it that when wolf dung was burned, there was a great deal of smoke that shot up into the blue sky, and it was easier to spot in the daytime than the light of a fire, which is why beacon fires were sometimes called wolf smoke. When the enemy was detected, the beacon fire was lit and passed from station to station, all the way to the military camp. More than 2,700 years ago, the beacon warning system was well established during the Zhou Dynasty in China.
Marathon running is to report
In the ancient times when transportation and communication were very undeveloped, people could only rely on two legs or riding a horse to pass on information. The marathon running program was set up in honor of a hero who died more than 2,000 years ago trying to deliver a good news. In 490 B.C., the Greek army repelled an invasion by the army of Darius I, King of Persia, on the plains of Marathon. The messenger Pheidippides ran from the town of Marathon to Athens, the capital city, to report the good news, and when he had finished the 42.195 kilometers and rushed to the Athens Square to finish the news, he collapsed and died of exhaustion. In honor of the warrior's heroism, in 1896, at the world's first Olympic Games, the distance he ran was included in the games as a long-distance running event.
Transmitting messages by post
The invention of writing facilitated interaction, and communication has been going on ever since. As far back as the Zhou Dynasty, China established post stations specializing in transmitting official documents, passing them down from post to post by horseback, and at the same time established a more complete postal system to achieve fast and accurate communication. After the unification of the six states during the Qin Dynasty, the postal information delivery system was established as an administrative institution of the state. Postal mail was used to realize long-distance communication by delivering messages at a speed of about 15 kilometers per hour run by steeds. This was fast enough at the time.
Pigeons and monkeys
To deliver messages, people in ancient times also came up with many bizarre methods, such as drift bottles, signal trees, pigeons and monkeys, and so on.
In the Bekasa region of Nigeria, people used monkeys to send letters. People keep the mother monkey and the son monkey in two separate places and often bring the mother monkey to look for the son monkey so that the mother monkey recognizes the route. When people need to communicate, the letter will be put in a bamboo tube and tied to the mother monkey, releasing it to go out to look for the child monkey, and the mother monkey will always be able to deliver the letter to the destination.
The carrier pigeon has been an effective tool for information transmission since ancient times. In today's highly developed communication technology, pigeons are still useful. In war, communication is crucial. However, once the outbreak of nuclear war, nuclear explosions produce strong electromagnetic radiation will make the existing electronic communication system is paralyzed, but pigeons can still fly freely. The Swiss army has trained and bred pigeons that can send letters in both directions. These pigeons no longer transmit traditional written letters, but carry a computer chip in a capsule, which can only be read on a specialized device, which is highly confidential. Carrier pigeons may even become special communication soldiers.
The emergence of the post office
It is generally believed that the post office was created by the Persian king Cyrus the Great. Cyrus ruled a large empire with vast territories, and the transmission of letters and messages by messengers could no longer meet the needs of the empire. For this reason, he established a postal administration consisting of a number of stations, which was the earliest post office. These posts were spaced at regular intervals and were responsible for taking care of the stagecoaches that made one stop each day.
China had a postal system from the earliest times, and it was largely perfected during the Tang Dynasty. The Yuan Dynasty also overhauled the postal delivery system, which linked East and West.
In 31 B.C.E., the Romans, during the reign of Augustus, modeled such an institution on the public **** post. The stations were stocked with stagecoaches that were well-fed with grass and guest rooms for the accommodation of passing officials.
During the Middle Ages, Roman-style post offices disappeared and monasteries spread throughout Europe. Correspondence between monasteries took place through the use of rolls of parchment known as hospitals. The first monastery wrote their transmission on the scroll, and the various monasteries to which it was delivered added theirs, thus making the scrolls longer and longer. For example, the roll that delivered the news of the death of the Abbot of Saint-Victor was 9.5 meters long and 0.25 meters wide. It was called the friar's post office.
The Daqing Post Office was founded in the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty (1862-1875), and was one of the thirteen major postal stations in the Shanghai area during the Qing Dynasty. It has gone through different stages, such as private letter office, foreign post office, newspaper office, customs post, and Daqing post. It is the only remaining Qing Dynasty post office site in East China and epitomizes the postal history of modern China.
In 1878 (Qing Guangxu four years), Yantai "Huayang letter hall" in Zhoucun set up a branch, is the predecessor of the Zibo area Qing postal institutions. 1900 end, Zhoucun Qing post office opened. 1902, Boshan second-class Qing post office was established, attached to the Bapu, Xiye Street, two offices, and set up a letter box 5, with 2 village and town messengers, and a letterbox 5, and the village and town messenger 2 people, and the post office is the only remaining site in East China. In 1902, Boshan second-class Qing Post Office was established, with 2 offices in Bapu and Xiyie Street, and 5 mailboxes, 2 village messengers, 2 other messengers through Yishui and Wangzhuang, and 4 messengers through Laiwu and Tai'an. 1904, the post office was set up in Linzi Xiguan Guangshun, and the pharmacy in Sanitation Hall. The following year, Huantai set up a third-class post office, Zhangdian, Suozhen set up a branch. Zhangdian Qing postal branch in the original Zhangdian Street, East Fourth Street, for the merchants on behalf of the letters and exchange business. Zhoucun, Zichuan, Xincheng (Huantai) Suozhen, Zhangdian and other bureaus under the General Administration of Jinan, Boshan, Linzi, Jinling, Zihe and other bureaus under the General Administration of Qingzhou.
After the Xinhai Revolution, "Qing Post Office" renamed "China Post Office". The post office set up within the postman, postal service, letter carrier, bureau four levels. The original Zhangdian Qing Post Office, moved to the north and south streets.
In January 1919, Linzi China Post Office was established in Linzi City, began as a third-class post office, the following October rose to second-class post office, the countryside set up Xin Dian, Zihe store, Sun Lou store, the West Old Town, four branch cabinets. 1920 in August, the establishment of the Huantai County Post Office (third-class bureau), Zhangdian Post Office (third-class bureau, later upgraded to the second-class), Zhoucun Post Office (second-class bureau), Boshan Post Office (second-class bureau). Huantai County Post Office in the North Stone Bridge, Cao Village, Paotou Bridge, set up a letter cabinet, is a businessman on behalf of the office.
In 1921, Boshan Post Office set up two additional village and town letter carriers, divided into the north and south of the 2-way, 3-day tour for a week. West River, Yuanquan, eight steep, Xiazhuang, Xingjiazhuang are set up letterbox.
In 1924, Zhangdian China Post Office was changed into a second-class bureau, renting 3 private rooms and operating money orders, premium letters and ordinary letters. A post office was also established in Nanding.
In 1926, the Zhangdian Post Office was moved to the former Zhangdian Erma Road (now Xiyi Road), and additional parcels and other businesses. At the same time, it set up mailboxes in Fushengli and Weigu, and set up mailing offices in Mashang and Weigu to handle small amounts of money transfer business.
In 1931, the Xindian branch was upgraded to Xindian Post Office.
In 1943, Tieshan, Weigu and Shiqiao set up postal agencies, which were later converted into post offices to handle small remittance services.
In 1945, Zhangdian and Nanding were both second-class B post offices. Zhangdian Post Office is equipped with a director, postal service value of two people, three messengers, four hard labor. Changcheng and Mashang also had post offices.
In March 1948, the liberation of the whole territory of Zibo, "China Post Office" is the wartime post office received. Until today's network communication, e-mail.
The earliest envelopes
Before the birth of the envelope, in order to keep the letter secret, people are quite brainwashed. The ancient Greeks shaved the hair of their slaves in order to send letters, wrote letters on their scalps, and then mailed the letters when their hair grew back. The recipient could read the letter by shaving the slave's hair. In the 10th century B.C., the Assyrians of Mesopotamia used a clay tablet as a letterhead, engraved it with the contents of the letter, and then put it into a pottery vessel and burned it, so that the addressee had to break the vessel in order to find out the contents of the letter.
Chinese Spring and Autumn, Warring States and Qin and Han Dynasties, the common letter is a wooden letter. Wooden letters were generally 1 foot long about 0.33 meters, so they were also called ruled letters. Envelope made of wood, carp-shaped, a bottom a cover clamped on the outside of the letter, the wood engraved on three line grooves on the board, with a rope bundle around three times, and then through a square hole binding, online or cross to check the wood, sealing the clay, stamped, as a letter inspection, in order to prevent private demolition. This board can be regarded as the earliest envelope in Chinese history.
Chinese lacquer imported into Europe, sealing lacquer has become the secret of communication magic. 1820, the British bookseller Brewer in the seaside vacation found a lot of young ladies and ladies are keen to write letters, but afraid of the contents of the letter to be known, so the design of a number of envelopes. This is the world's first batch of paper commodity envelopes. 1844, London appeared the first paste envelope machine. From then on, paper envelopes were popular all over the world.
Postmarks on Envelopes
Today, the main use of postmarks is to cancel stamps. But postmarks predate stamps by more than 400 years: they were first used in the post office of the Italian water town of Venice in the 1530s. At that time, it was only a small stamp on the mail, indicating the name of the place where the mail was received and sent. Since then there have been postmarks with postage paid, but none with a specific date.
In 1661, the British Postmaster General Bishop, in order to check and assess whether the letter carrier is timely delivery of mail, the creation of the world's first postmark with the date of the postmark, so that the postmark tends to be perfect, has been used to date. This postmark is 179 years older than the world's first stamp.
In 1879, the Qing government of China opened the Qing Post Office, which used the Bagua postmark. The bagua postmark only indicated the name of the place, not the date. Later postmarks were gradually marked with chronological dates. However, the postmark on the chronology is more special, the Chinese people's **** and after the establishment of the country, the unified use of the AD chronology.
After entering the 20th century, the types of postmarks continued to increase, in addition to the postmark, there are postage paid stamps, commemorative postmarks, free military postmarks, commemorative postmarks of tourist attractions and other more than 10 kinds.
The earliest penny stamp
In Bishop invented with the date postmark before the 1365, the French city of Paris Post Office in order to deal with the increasing number of letters due to the refusal to pay the postage backlog, by the postmark inspired by the printing of a special small pieces of paper. There is no pattern on the paper, only the words printed. This small piece of paper with a postage-paid stamp is the earliest stamp.
The Irishman James Chalmers produced the world's first postage stamps in 1834, after Britain's Postmaster General, Sir Rowland Hill, reformed the postal service in 1838. Hill set a national postage rate of one penny for half an ounce across the board and issued one-penny stamps.
Punching holes in stamps
In 1847, Englishman Henry Arthur invented the first stamp-splitting and cutting equipment. Initially, this device could only cut stamps. A year later, the inventor improved this machine by creating a perforator capable of punching rows of small holes.In 1854, the first perforation machine for perforated stamps was created.
Mailboxes
Before and after 1650, there was a post office in Paris, which was responsible for correspondence with the provinces and foreign countries, but there was no way for the residents of Paris to communicate with each other. For this reason in 1653, the Frenchman de Villiers for the first time to put some of the boxes used to put the letter hanging on the wall at the corner of the main street as a mailbox, to make up for this shortcoming. Residents living in the city could put their letters into the mailboxes near them by sticking their paid postage bills on the envelopes, and the post office clerks opened the boxes three times a day to collect them.
In 1692 there were six such boxes in Paris***, in 1723 seven, in 1740 twelve, and by 1780 more than 500.
Postcards
Postcards were invented in Philadelphia in 1861 by John Charlton of the United States. Later, a businessman named Harry Lippmann added decorations to the postcard design, made a public offering and patented it. Prepaid postcards do not require stamps. First invented by Emanuel Hermann at the Military Academy of Isthmus in Vienna, Austria, the prepaid postcard was first issued in the world on October 1, 1869, with a yellowish surface and a stamp with a face value of 2 kleisers. Postcards can be relatives, friends, etc. to express greetings, congratulations, sorry, etc., is the other means of communication can not be replaced, and therefore still in a large number of use, and more and more kinds of decoration more and more artistic, bring people a kind of beauty to enjoy. Such as birthday cards, student cards, wedding cards and so on. Today, postcards have become part of people's lives.
Postal colors
The postal colors of the world's countries are set in accordance with national traditions and customs. For example, the United Kingdom uses red, the United States uses gray, and China uses green.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the first national postal conference held in December 1949 discussed the issue of postal colors and concluded that green symbolizes peace, youth and prosperity, so a resolution was made to stipulate that the people's postal service uses green as the special color.
How International Mail is Delivered
There are about 654,000 post offices of various sizes around the world, and the international mail reaches one billion pieces every day. Millions of postal workers in the 169 member countries of the World Postal Union serve to deliver the mail. So how is international mail delivered? For example, a person working in Piss River, Alberta, Canada, writes a letter on Monday to a friend who lives near Nice in the south of France. The letter carrier collects the mail that afternoon and delivers it to the post office in town. The postal worker separates the local mail from mail destined for the rest of Canada, and divides the international mail into two categories: west of the Pacific Ocean and east of the Pacific Ocean. In the evening, the mail is loaded onto trucks for shipment to Prairie City, 160 kilometers away. The next morning both classes of international mail were loaded onto trucks for another shipment to Edmonton, the provincial capital, 480 km away, and from the Edmonton post office to the airport. At the airport, westbound mail was airlifted to Vancouver and eastbound mail was shipped to Toronto. Mail arrives in Toronto sorted by the country to which the destination belongs, a process that was not completed until Thursday. On Thursday night, the international flight from Toronto to Paris arrives on Friday morning.
In Paris, mail is handled by a mechanized system. A coding machine adds a bar code to the postal district number, indicating where the letter was last delivered. Another machine sorts the letters one by one by administrative district. The letters are sent along a conveyor belt to pouches, which are then sent to Marseille and Nice by truck, train and plane. A postal worker in Nice sorts the letters and on Saturday mornings takes the mail to the post office, where the letter carrier delivers it to his friend's house.
Global courier service
Ordinary mail service was not fast enough because postal workers handled hundreds of millions of pieces of mail, and delivery was slow, with mail taking days or even weeks to reach its destination.In the late 1960s, companies everywhere had a big problem getting their mail delivered quickly, and international courier companies were born. Commercial organizations sent airplanes to all parts of the world, most of which could arrive within 24 hours. Air courier services use the latest technology to book cargo and passenger flights so that the fastest routes are always available. Large-scale courier companies use computers to store schedules for flights around the world, and many have their own airplanes and helicopters. All courier companies have dedicated fleets of pickup trucks and motorcycles to collect and deliver mail door-to-door.
The largest U.S. courier company in 1989 with 418 aircraft, an average of 140,000 daily mail handling. European express companies can deliver mail to the rest of Europe the next day, and outside Europe within two days. American Express can deliver mail to domestic destinations on the same or next day.
Most express mail is letters or small packages, and the number of manufacturers using express services to ship manufactured goods is growing. During the 1970s, the total turnover of the courier industry doubled every two or three years, reaching an annual value of about $4 billion in 1990.
Courier mail with rockets
A U.S. company has created an original, simple device that is much less expensive than an aerospace rocket. It uses the rocket's warhead compartment to deliver mail with a load capacity of 10 kilograms, and when the rocket arrives over its destination, the rocket's hatch opens automatically, shooting the mail out with a parachute, and then informing the local post office by radio to receive the mail. The rocket sails through the atmosphere at such a speed that it takes only 50 minutes to travel from New York to London. This company is now officially accepting postal business.
Electronic messenger
Electronic messenger is a specific specification of the letter, put into the electronic mailbox, the letter is automatically opened, through the photoelectric device word by word scanning, the optical signal into electrical signals. In this way, the text image information will be transmitted to a distant place through the fax machine, and the original letter can be automatically destroyed. At the same time, the receipt of letters fax machine on the received electrical signals reduced to optical signals, with photography, the sender's handwriting recorded on a standard letter, automatic sealing, and then the output of an address, name, the content of the letter and the letter sent exactly the same letter. No matter how far apart, the electronic messenger can complete the entire delivery process in just a few dozen seconds.
On June 7, 1980, the first letter arrived in Toronto, Canada, via satellite from London, crossing the Atlantic in a brief minute. The local post office received the electronic letter and delivered it to the recipient by express delivery