Airmail (or air mail ) is mail that is transported by aircraft. Typically it arrives more quickly than surface mail, and sometimes costs more to send. Airmail may be the only option for sending mail to some destinations, such as overseas, if the mail cannot wait the time it would take to arrive by ship, which can sometimes be weeks.Historical development
The origins of airmail reach back to long before the invention of the first flying machines. During the 5th century seige of Potidaea messages attached to arrow shafts were fired from behind the besieging lines and a traitor within the city received these missives. Arrows with tiny scrolls attached were a common form of short distance communication. In ancient times messages were delivered by airmail; through various breeding methods it became possible to use homing pigeons to carry communications, though tame frigatebirds were used in the South Pacific Ellice Islands in the mid-19th century. The Chinese are recorded as having used kites to deliver messages to a beleaguered city in AD 549. The same method was employed in May 1807 by Admiral Cochrane to send propaganda messages to the French during the Napoleonic Wars and again during the Peninsular Campaign. Before the development of heavier than air machines and the development and expansion of the aviation industry, lighter than air machines were used to transmit mail by air though airships, such as the Zeppelins, which were used until the 1930s.
Pigeon post
Main article: Pigeon postThe earliest known records of homing pigeon use for message delivery in ancient Egypt are from 5600 B.C. More and more military, political, and economic importance was attributed to this fast method of delivering messages. In 1279 B.C., the news of the coronation of pharaoh Ramesses II was spread by this method. Soon, pigeons were also used by several other advanced cultures. The Roman commander Julius Caesar used this special method to send commands to his troops as quickly as possible. A particular example was his use of carrier pigeons to communicate the disturbances in conquered Gaul.
In the Middle Ages the homing pigeon was also in great demand for message delivery. It was brought to Europe by crusaders in the 12th and 13th centuries. Prior to this it was used mainly in the orient. The caliph of Baghdad, Nur-Eddin , established his own homing pigeon post from Cairo to the Euphrates river, but it terminated after the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258. In the Middle Ages, Egyptian sultans established their own National Pigeon Post .
Pigeons were used during the 1870–71 Siege of Paris to bring messages back to the city. The pigeons were flown out of the city on the balloons and sent by railway to the Espérance (Paris society of pigeon-fanciers) base in Tours where despatches, initially hand written and later microphotographed onto tiny flimsies, were placed inside quills and fixed to the tail feathers of the birds. Upon arrival, the message was projected onto a wall and transcribed before delivery. Essentially this was a similar process to the lightweight photographic Airgraph or V-mail systems of World War II.
The use of pigeons to carry mail has been associated with military situations though, after experiments in 1896, a regular pigeon post was inaugurated on the Great Barrier Island on May 14, 1897.
World War I saw further military pigeon mail use during the Siege of Przemyśl and the U.S. Army Signal Corps in France flew more than 600 birds of which one, Cher Ami , was awarded the French Croix de Guerre for his heroic service in delivering 12 important messages, despite having been very badly injured.
First flying machines
The first flying machine designs that can be taken seriously appeared in Europe in the Renaissance. The best-known were drawn by the Italian genius Leonardo da Vinci but the first constructions capable of actually flying were not made for another 250 years. The Montgolfier brothers by chance discovered that hot air is strong enough to lift a paper bag into the air. This discovery was the basis for the development of the first hot air balloon, the Montgolfière. On November 21, 1783 the first flight of a human in a hot air balloon took place.
The invention of the hot air balloon had a great impact on the history of airmail. Just one year after the first manned balloon flight, the pilots took smaller messages or notes with them on their flights, but it was not until 1793 that proper balloon post first occurred. From the besieged fortresses of Valenciennes and Condé in France, notes for the confederates of those who were trapped were flown with small free-flying balloons. Indeed, these messages were caught by the enemy. During the first aerial balloon flight in North America on January 9, 1793, from Philadelphia to Deptford, New Jersey, Jean-Pierre Blanchard carried a personal letter from George Washington to be delivered to the owner of whatever property Blanchard happened to land on, making the flight the first delivery of air mail in the United States. In the following decades there was further use of balloons for the purpose of message delivery during war.
John Wise piloted an unofficial balloon post flight that took place on July 17, 1859 from St. Louis, USA to Henderson, New York, a distance of 1,290 km, on which he carried a mailbag entrusted to him by the American Express Company. One month later, on August 17, Wise flew from Lafayette, Indiana to Crawfordsville, Indiana and carried 123 letters and 23 circulars onboard that had been collected by the postmaster Thomas Wood and endorsed "PREPAID", but only one of these historic postal covers has been discovered, in 1957. In 1959 the United States Postal Service issued a 7 cent stamp commemorating Wise's flight in the Jupiter .
The Franco-Prussian War saw the use of balloons as a means of maintaining communications from the sieged cities of Metz and Paris to unoccupied France. Between September 5, 1870 and October 3, thirty–one unmanned mail carrying balloons were released from Metz, a few of which were flights carrying pigeons; no pigeons ever returned. Perhaps the most well-known balloon mail flights are those that took place during the Siege of Paris and were effected by the interplay of balloon mail and homing pigeons. A total of 65 flights took place; six were captured and two were blown out to sea and never found. Besides 2,500,000 letters and postcards, 363 homing pigeons were delivered by the balloons, to enable the return of replies and other messages.
In Germany the first official balloon post flight took place in June 1897 during the Leipzig business fair. The pilot Louis Godard flew in the Aug. Polich for 18 hours. He handed over the postcards he had carried, which had received a despatch marking "Leipzig 19.10.1897" and a "Tarnau 21.10.1897" arrival cancel, to the Reichspost for forwarding, following a flight of 1,665 km.
Until the end of the 19th century such airmail deliveries always took place in the course of special events or for military reasons. In a widely noticed speech, the German general postmaster Heinrich von Stephan, initiator of the Universal Postal Union, pointed out the possible importance of airmail for everyday post delivery in 1874. His speech was even released as a book under the title " Weltpost und Luftschiffahrt " (World Post and Airship Travel).
Invention of the airplane
Nothing had greater impact on the history of airmail than the invention of the airplane. After the first flight experiments by Otto Lilienthal with his hang-glider in the summer of 1891, the first motorised flight by the Wright Brothers took place on December 17, 1903. Five years later, the first mail delivery by airplane took place; on August 12, 1909 special cancellations for a sightseeing flight over Milan were issued during the course of an aviation exhibition. One month later, on September 20, 1909, on the occasion of a sightseeing flight over the Italian city of Brescia, covers were carried which were provided with a similar special cancellation. However, at these two events the postal consignments were not forwarded.
The first official postal delivery flight between two towns took place on February 18, 1911, during the United Provinces Industrial and Agricultural Exhibition in India. The young French pilot Henri Pequet carried approx. 6,500 letters from the exhibition place Allahabad to Naini, which is approx. 8 km away. It took Henri Pequet and his biplane "Sommer" about 13 minutes for the distance. The carried covers were provided with the large circular bright magenta postmark "First Aerial Post, U.P. Exhibition Allahabad 1911" and a few
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