POSTAGE STAMPS, a term employed to indicate not really a stamp or impres sion, but a printed label pasted on pack ages and letters to show that the cost of carriage has been already paid. Such stamps may be issued by the govern ment or by carrying companies. The term in the main is restricted to stamps issued by stable governments, and in such case the stamps have a recognized value in accordance with the amount indicated on their face. The two main divisions are adhesive stamps and stamps actually engraved in the envelope. The adhesives are placed on the matter to be delivered, and this has been the method in vogue since 1840, when Row land Hill conceived his uniform Penny Postage plan and succeeded in having it established in Great Britain. Up to that time it had been the custom to charge for the transportation of letters and pack ages in proportion to the distance cov ered, and these charges often mounted to a considerable sum, such as "twelve pence" or 24 cents for a distance of 250 miles. The charges were also usu ally not prepaid, and there was frequent loss to the carrying company in cases of refusal of payment on the part of the addressee. The great growth in cor respondence which followed the innova tion and the trifling cost involved in the production of stamps guaranteed its suc cess from a financial point of view from the start.
The use of the prepaid stamp speedily spread to other countries, and was gradu ally taken up by the governments of the different nations with the assumption by these governments of the national.
forwarding of letters. The recognition of the Universal Postal Union, which issued rules governing the issue of inter national postage stamps, the character of their designs, and the value repre sented by them, was the final develop ment in the issue and use of postage stamps.
While the varieties of postage stamps are many, their characteristics are re stricted within certain defined limits. Its shape is usually square, but it may take other forms, and its size has re mained very much as it was in the original issue. In recent years it has become a practice in•several countries to celebrate national events by the issue of commemorative stamps. The vogue has been greater in American countries than in more conservative Europe, where, in the case of monarchies, it has been the custom to print the monarch's head on the stamp. Though stamps have not greatly differed in their designs since the first issue, there has been a great de velopment in the modes of their produc tion, in proportion to the growth in general correspondence. In general the earlier designs, being engraved by hand, are superior to the later ones, and are more valued by the collector apart from the rarity. The collecting of stamps, styled philately, has long had an inter national vogue particularly among young people.