History of mail: from three to e-mail. Pigeon mail. Postcards. Mail delivery. History of Russian Post
POSTAL SERVICE is a type of communication that ensures the forwarding and delivery of written and printed materials to addressees, as well as money transfers, parcels, parcels and more.
Ob-ra-bot-ka and trans-port-tirov-ka mail. In organizational terms postal service represents a system consisting of a network of communication enterprises (posts, nodes and from-de-le- communications) and transport means that provide reception, processing and delivery of mail from -right. To receive mail from communications at communications enterprises, you have special locations - operations -these are the halls where the work-places of the opera-to-ditch are located. Operations accept all types of almost-from-rights, except for simple cor-res-pon-den-tions (not -official letters, postcards and the like), the last one steps through the established postal mailboxes (invented in 1653 in France by J.J. Re-noir de Villelaye).
In cities, resort villages and the like, more and more races are getting auto-ma-ti-zed points -you are communications that provide postal services in the form of self-service, where with the help of postal -a car with a built-in ter-mi-na-lom, along with simple operations (according to purchase -ver-tov, post-cards, newspapers), you can, for example, send a registered letter.
Postal processing at the local post office includes a number of production operations that provide -get-ready-to-have-to-have-to-be-from-the-rights to the re-sending according to-the-sign. To the main operations from-no-syat-sya: dis-bor-ka (dis-de-le-nie) almost by type, ka-te-go-ri-yam, ha -large size, weight and hardness (from the right of non-standard size from grade) -ro-you-va-yut-sya for a separate processing); faces-ka and stamp-pe-le-va-nie - us-ta-nov-ka address-res-noy of the written correspondence-res-pon-den-tion in the op-re-de- flax-line and on-not-printed-from-ka-len-dar-no-go stamp-pe-la to designate-the-place , yes, you, the time of his st-p-le-niya, as well as the ga-she-niya of the sign of almost-howl op-la-you; for-mi-ro-va-nie post-pa-ke-tov (packs of pi-sem and postal cards, group-pi-ro-van-nye by address given and other signs), their sorting with subsequent packaging in postal bags for further trans- port-ti-rov-ki and more. From the local post offices, the post office goes to the inter-district post office, and from there - to the main city -local or regional post office for the next sorting. The final stage of the work of postal enterprises is the delivery and delivery of postal documents from the postal authorities. te-lyu (ad-re-sa-tu).
Re-carriage of the post office in the vi-si-mo-sti from cli-ma-tic and road conditions various views of trans-port. The railway transport port is used primarily for the re-carriage of heavy mail - po-sy-lok, ban-de-ro-ley, zhur-na -fishing The air transport port serves mainly for the transportation of newspapers and correspondence between large cities, air -to-trans-port - on inter-district, internal-district and city postal routes, as well as for you-e-ki-pi- these from the postal boxes, delivering the mail to the dos-ta-vost-schools. Rural villages in places where there are no stationary communications establishments are serviced by re-movable -de-le-niya communications, under which equipment the car-mo-bi-whether on-high pro-ho-di-mo-sti , cur-si-ru-schi-schi-shu-du on-se-len-ny-mi points-ta-mi.
Su-sche-st-vu-yut and other systems of trans-port-ti-rov-ki mail. So, for example, in Lon-do-not there is a work-melting without ma-shi-ni-sta underground railway road, which paradise re-packs postal correspondence into bags at a speed of up to 55 km/h along the pro-line length 10.5 km, serviced several times. there is a post office and two large railway stations. Another way is pneumatic mail: drops with letters are sent with compressed air through the underground trumpet-bang. The most multi-branched system of the same type (with a span of several hundred kilometers) operates in Pa-ri -where, through underground pipes, letters and delicate transfers are delivered to all city post offices.
It is believed that Russian post- one of the oldest in Europe. Its foundations were laid back in the 9th century. It was then that the population began to be subject to a special duty, which consisted of giving the princely messenger a horse and food for it.
Development of postal business in the Middle Ages
Such famous Russian coachmen appeared in the 13th century, during the Golden Horde yoke. For quick communication with the outskirts of the vast empire, postal stations called pits were created.
After getting rid of the Mongol-Tatar dependence, the country's Yam service began to actively develop. By the 15th century, communication was established everywhere. Royal messengers usually delivered one letter or charter. Coachmen could transport not only papers, but also people, as well as various things.
During the 16th century, there was a rapid increase in roads, and, accordingly, pits with coachmen. The Yamskaya Prikaz was established, supervising the stations. It was possible to connect the northern cities with Moscow. The letters took about 3 weeks from the capital to the border with Sweden. But if the spring thaw began, much more time was spent.
The first postal service appeared in 1667. The initiator of its creation was boyar A.L. Ordyna-Nashchekin. The coachmen were renamed postmen and given them special form. Mail began to be delivered more slowly, but more regularly. More letters were prepared for sending, and they were sent at specific times, and not occasionally.
Mail from the 18th to the 20th centuries
In the 18th century, a decree appeared on the organization of post offices in all “noble” cities. This structure has acquired a clear hierarchy. The main ones were post offices, followed by provincial postmasters, then county postmasters, and the lowest level was occupied by stations.
By the middle of the century, the total length of postal routes was approximately 17,000 versts. They were put on maps for the first time. A permanent postal service was organized between Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the second half of the 18th century, in addition to letters and parcels, money began to be delivered, and postmen began to deliver correspondence.
In 1820, postal stagecoaches were created. At the same time, the country's first intracity post office was organized in St. Petersburg. After 30 years, Russian cities are getting mailboxes. Delivery of shipments by rail is also beginning to develop. In 1874, Russia joined the Universal Postal Union.
Throughout the 20th century, several laws were passed aimed at improving postal communications. Currently used for postal needs various types transport. Thanks to this, letters are delivered faster throughout Russia and parcels of various sizes and weights are sent. You can also make money transfers at the branches.
Laughing, Aristarchus clarified whether it was true that the grandmother was a magician.
Valentina, that was the woman’s name, confirmed this unscientific fact.
True, people go to her mainly to talk about toothache and warts.
In other areas of medicine, the grandmother fails.
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It's nice to write about topics that don't involve surprises. And then you write about the history of a newfangled service, and you don’t really know whether it will remain popular in a couple of years or will sink into oblivion. I wrote, I tried, but tomorrow no one will be interested in it anymore. Another thing is things that are tried and true, which change and improve, but do not disappear.
The topic of today's conversation is the history of the emergence of a well-known and familiar service. Email History. Yes, yes, now e-mail is perceived as something obvious and obligatory for existence, but a few decades ago e-mail was still a curiosity.
Otherwise, let's take it in order.
How did email come about?
Back in 1965, when computers were big and their capabilities were small, a group of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote special program called Mail. It was assumed that with the help of this program people would exchange messages sent within the same computer system.
Don't even look in that one ancient mail a familiar post office with an address [email protected], lists, spam folder and other modern things. Things were more prosaic: the Mail “program” was separate file with a unique name, where messages sent by users were added. Yes, not much, but it was at least something.
Further development of e-mail took place solely thanks to the US Department of Defense and specifically Ray Tomlinson(Ray Tomlinson), who in 1968 worked on the secret SNDMSG program as part of an equally secret development under the name APRANET.
APRANET-, which was developed exclusively for military purposes. It was assumed that the military would communicate with each other in closed network and this will completely eliminate the possibility of hacking from the outside.
SNDMSG(Send Message) is a program that would simplify communication between users of the APRANET military network. The secrecy of the project did not imply the disclosure of any information, and therefore civilians remained in the dark about these developments for a long time.
If you thought that with the advent of SNDMSG, email has become at least minimally familiar to the modern user interface, I will be forced to say no again. To be honest, the only cardinal difference new program became the ability to send a personalized message. "Mailbox" was still special file, in which sent messages were accumulated.
E-mail: the appearance of a “dog” and a smiley face in mature mail
Beginning in 1972, e-mail entered a phase of rapid development. There were two events that contributed to this. Event one - Ray Tomlinson's colleague finally created some semblance of a shell for mail client. His obvious achievements were sorting letters and sending files. Another six months later, Ray Tomlinson improved the functionality of the shell.
The second event, without which it is impossible to imagine modern email, was the appearance of the “ @ " In RuNet known as “dog”.
According to Tomlinson, the badge had nothing to do with dogs. I’ll try to explain the meaning Ray himself put into it: the “@” sign reads “at”, which translates as “on”. In Russian, creating address options using the formula “ [email protected]" means "*person's name* is on *server name*".
Another important period in the history of email was 1975, when John Vitall finalized the MSG program, making it similar to modern email. There was nothing like that in her before. Automatic replies have appeared, sorting letters has become more convenient and accurate, and the organization of some other processes within the framework of working with correspondence has improved.
And it’s interesting that at first three quarters of the traffic on the APRANET network came from email messages. It even got to the point where there was a regular mailing of science fiction to employees.
Now about the smiley face.
Since its appearance, the emoticon (colon with a parenthesis, in case anyone has forgotten) is entirely due to email. In 1979 (at that time mail had already become available to scientists not involved in the defense industry), one of the scientists proposed to somewhat diversify communication by introducing emotional “islands” into the inhospitable officialdom of “dry” texts. As you understand, they became emoticons. The idea was liked by many, the smiley went around the world.
What else can I say about email? Since the article is not written for programmers, but for those interested in the phenomenon as such, I will not go into further details regarding changing protocols, expanding the potential of email, and so on. I’ll just say what you already know: today e-mail has replaced the classic paper mail and has become commonplace for billions of inhabitants of planet Earth.
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I wonder how many years they have been writing, sending and receiving letters?
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In R. Kipling's fairy tale “How the First Letter Was Written,” the letter was not written, but drawn! And let's start from afar...
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The clay letter you see was drawn three thousand years BC. They were called tablets. Such letters were sent in clay envelopes. The person to whom the letter was intended carefully broke the envelope and then read the letter.
In Rus', the first letters and documents were birch bark letters.
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Ancient messages were handed to the messenger. No one envied the messengers!
When a messenger left for a foreign country, he bequeathed his property to his children for fear that he would not return home. A lonely running person was often attacked by predatory animals.
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The Indian messenger announced his approach with the sounds of rattles.
Animals were used to deliver mail: camels, elephants, horses, deer...
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In bad weather, the narrow streets of ancient cities were filled with impassable mud—the postman sometimes walked on stilts.
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Artists of the past often depicted postmen.
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Stagecoaches appeared in England in the 16th century. These large covered carriages carried passengers, mail, and luggage.
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The outstanding statesman A.L. made a great contribution to the development of Russian postal service. Ordin-Nashchekin. He created a regular postal chase (fast driving).
Presenter 1st.
Where did the word “mail” come from?
Boyar Ordin-Nashchekin was an educated, talented person. It was he who was the creator of postal communications with foreign countries. When signing a peace treaty with Poland, he included in it a clause on “correct mail” between the two states.
This is how the word “mail” appeared in the Russian language. In Polish and some other languages, it sounded close to the word “road”.
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There were more than 3 thousand postal stations on Russian roads in the last century.
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Letters are little travelers. From city to city they travel by train, sail by boat, fly by plane, but when there was no postal transport yet, there was another type of letter delivery.
It was pigeon mail. It has served man for centuries. It was also used by Egyptian pharaohs, Persian kings, Greek and Roman commanders, and sailors.
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The pigeon quickly gets used to the person, to his house, to his roof. The pigeon is taken away in a closed box hundreds of kilometers away. He doesn't see the road. The bird released into the wild at first feels confused, then, as if an invisible compass shows it in which direction to look for a home.
But before the dove rises into the air, careful hands attach a tiny message to the back, to the paw or to the tail feather.
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Pigeons became especially famous during the siege of Paris by German troops in 1870–1871.
The pigeon post worked great and to the Great Patriotic War in 1941 - 1945. 15 thousand “pigeongrams” were sent from the front line.
There are cases when pigeon mail is still in effect today. In some countries, amateur pigeon breeders train homing pigeons, or, as they now often say, racing pigeons. Competitions are organized, including international ones. Victory is awarded for the speed and accuracy of the birds' flight.
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In addition to pigeon mail, there is also bottle mail. Of course, this is not very reliable way send news from a long voyage. Finding a bottle in the ocean waves is probably no easier than finding a needle in a haystack. But still there is hope. Columbus preferred an oak barrel to a glass one. It's more noticeable than the bottle. And what kind of sailor will ignore a tarred barrel, inside of which, probably, good old wine is splashing.
They say that Columbus's message was carried by the ocean waves for 360 years.
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Bottle mail today serves science. Glass vessels with postcards inside are thrown into the sea from ships exploring the world's oceans. The finder of such a vessel is asked to report as accurately as possible where it was caught and send a postcard to the scientific institute at the address printed on it.
The institute knows the place and time when the vessel was given over to the will of the winds and currents. Now it will be known where they brought him. There are hundreds of thousands of such bottles. The lines of their paths plotted on the map show the directions of the main sea currents, their speed, and variability.
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In Siberia, the nomads of the tundra of cold Taimyr had their own way of delivering letters.
A man rides on reindeer and asks the person he meets where he is going. If in the right direction, gives him the letter.
So the message passes from hand to hand until it reaches the addressee. Delivering a letter was a matter of honor.
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The progress of technology was reflected in the progress of mail. After all, mail is an important part of human civilization. Postal routes have been replaced railways. Fast ships were built to transport mail by sea. On long distances letters are delivered by airplanes.
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By the middle of the last century, mail operated in almost all states globe. They were very different countries. Rich and poor, developed and backward. In 1874, 22 European countries united in Bern, the capital of Switzerland. Then others joined them, forming the Universal Postal Union. Now there are about 170 states, including Russia.
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Letters have great value in people's lives. With the help of letters, people communicate at a distance, report news from their lives, support each other in difficult times and share joy.
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We would like to offer you several riddles on the topic
our event.
Presenter 1st.
Everything rides on it: both joy and sorrow. (Mail.)
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Without wings, but flies; without a tongue, but speaks. (Letter.)
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The house is made of tin, and the residents in it are to lead. (Mailbox.)
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They are cutting down here, and the chips are flying all over the world. (Letters.)
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We invite you to answer the quiz questions.
- How do you feel when you meet a postman on the street? Why?
- What correspondence is the most awaited for you? Why?
- When did the first letters appear?
- What attracts you more in correspondence - receiving letters or writing?
- Do your families keep letters? From whom? Why?
- What content are the letters?
Information. It is probably difficult to name something else in our world that is just as intangible and just as dense, permeating all directions and constantly accumulating around us. The preservation of information appeared with the first rock inscriptions, and along with the need to transmit it over long distances, signal fires were lit and drums began to sound. This is how the first post office was born. In this series of articles we will show you how this most important segment of our lives works, how it is evolving, what it was and what it will be: mail.
People learned to speak relatively long ago, but the human voice is imperfect when it comes to sending messages far away. As the need to share information not only accumulated, but increased exponentially as our world evolved, new forms of postal communication were born along with it. From the first signal drums, which appeared about 8,000 years ago, ancient tribes moved on to fire and smoke: they can be seen from afar, and the very fact of lighting a smoke column was a kind of signal. African tribes still use tom-toms for communication, and bonfires were used even by the Indians of the 20th century.
The first beginnings of postal communication were born in ancient states along with the advent of writing: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Persia, China, and the Roman Empire. The first messengers walked along the roads; later they mounted horses. Messages and written messages were transmitted according to the relay race principle. In the Ancient East, rulers needed to be supplied with constant information about what was happening in the slave-owning territories under their control. It is not surprising that this led to the development of the prototype of postal service. It is believed that the first postal message was sent about 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia in the form of a sealed clay letter.
The post of antiquity was built on messengers, who, orally, in writing, by sea, on horseback, by land, on foot - and most often for military purposes - carried news to all corners of the states. This system of transmitting messages received particular development in the Roman Empire, and with its fall (around 520 AD), mail ceased to exist. In feudal medieval Europe of the 11th–15th centuries, post and communications as such were transferred to spiritual and secular institutions. That is, the church began to deal with mail. We will talk about this period later.
N.K. Roerich, "Messenger"
Let's think about it for a second. When was the last time you used postal services? You may remember a package that you picked up from a post office or directly from a courier. They sent letters to some government agency. They opened envelopes in search of money in distant unhappy childhood. Sending “letters of happiness”, carefully “licking”, as expected, each envelope, without indicating the return address. It seems that mail is moving away from us, transforming itself mostly into a delivery service and going to the “cloud”. In fact, mail is evolving. The news and article you are reading now is an example of the evolution of news that has passed long way from the weathered hands or even the lips of a Persian messenger to the image on your display. E-mail, without which we cannot imagine our life, was impossible without the Internet, and the Internet appeared not so long ago - it is not even 50 years old. Instead of emails people sent only paper ones. And even in the future, when, perhaps, there will no longer be a need to deliver a package - the desired product will be printed on your 3D printer, materialized in a teleporter, or you will use exclusively virtual products - all this will only be an evolution of mail.
Information does not disappear without a trace, does not dissolve in a black hole, it only takes on a different form.
There are not many phenomena in the world, or even institutions, that have emerged as a result of consistent and independent development across the globe. Offhand, we can name only the most grandiose ones - writing and languages, many of them; an institute of science that has absorbed the research of scientists from all over the world over many millennia; a matter of diplomacy and statehood, which even in modern times do not shy away from the norms developed back in the Roman Empire; artistic culture, the heyday of which is considered to be Ancient Greece. Try to include mail here, and you will be surprised how perfectly this institute fits into this series and includes the best of what people in different parts of the globe can come up with, together and separately.
The medieval church, being the one and only authority, took upon itself the task of centralization, which would have been impossible without own system messages - monastery mail. Couriers from the monasteries maintained contact between individual monasteries and the head of the church in Rome, between monastic orders and their brotherhoods. At the same time, stations for changing horses were born, which later migrated to Russia. Actually, the word “post” comes from the Italian “statio posita in...”, which meant a station for changing horses. The word “mail” (post) was first used in this meaning in the 12th century.
European universities of the mid-second millennium, to which, historically, students flocked from a variety of countries, almost walked, in Lomonosov style, to get an education, used this important point: For a fee, professional university mail messengers maintained contact between students and their families, sometimes delivering letters to individuals.
An interesting phenomenon was the “butchers’ mail”. By nature of activity, the European butcher shop, which traveled extensively for purchasing purposes, took on the responsibility of transporting letters and parcels. In some cities in southern Germany this became the responsibility of butchers, in return for which they received certain privileges. This post office operated until the end of the 17th century and in some places received national significance.
Franz von Taxis
And yet, the first organized mail in every sense of the word is considered to be the mail created by members of the Tasso clan (Tassis, Taxis). The Thurn and Taxis post office existed from the second half of the 15th century until 1867 and made a huge contribution to the development of postal services in Europe. The Taxis post office was maintained at their own expense, at their own risk, but invariably remained a private enterprise, although the emperors laid claim to its establishment. The Thurn and Taxis post office importantly adopted all the effects of the evolution of postal services and promptly introduced the postmark and postage stamp into use. 400 years is not a bad history for private mail.
As for Russian postal service, Russian postal service, which developed on the territory of the then Russian state, historians are of the opinion that our ancestors took over the postal service from the Mongol conquerors. During that troubled period, postal stations (which we talked about above) and “pits” appeared on the main roads, where “yamchas” (messengers) changed horses. As you might guess, the word “coachman” is rooted in this legend. And the word “postman” found its way into pre-revolutionary Russia in 1716 (before that, postal employees were called “postmen”).
The reforms of Peter I led to the fact that postal services in Russia appeared in all the main cities of the country. The state took over the postal service, the first post offices and post offices were opened, and the position of postmaster was introduced. The first mail cars (between St. Petersburg and Moscow) paved their way in 1851. What happened next - you know mailbox The first letter in your life fell. We'll talk about how mail works and which of its elements have undergone evolution and which have remained unchanged.
It is impossible to describe in words how far the influence of evolution and revolutions has gone in postal service, on land and at sea. The post can certainly be called a great achievement of mankind. The peace of 1782, which followed the American War of Independence, was concluded only after negotiations that lasted more than two years. Prussia and Austria fought in 1866. The campaign took seven days; and seven weeks elapsed from the declaration of war to the formal conclusion of peace. Obviously, the time difference in both cases was due only to the fact that in one case the news took longer, and in the other, faster.
We can look at the past with mixed feelings - remembering our frivolous ancestors, who were in no hurry and who had enough time for reflection; we consider those times lethargic, sluggish, calm.
We are proud of our own era as filled with life and activity, haste and nerves, high electrical voltage. But many of us know the price of this whirlpool of life events and often say: “This pace is killing.” Will this pace continue for the next hundred years? Most likely yes. The evolution of mail allows us to fit more actions into a minute of life, as does the evolution of many other things, of course. Letters no longer take weeks to arrive, parcels will soon be delivered instantly, communication has practically lost any restrictions. What will mail be like in the future? You will be the first to know about it.
Testing of the first postal drones has already begun...