Brian Bobing, age 11

Which country had the first postal system?

"..and neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of nights stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." These words perhaps modified are carved in stone on many a post office building and they refer of course to our postal system.  Actually they were written about a postal service which existed in Persia 2500 years ago. These old time mailmen were rather like our not too ancient Pony Express riders. They carried mail on fast horses and delivered it from one post to the next.

This was the postal service of Cirrus of ancient Persian but even then the idea was not a new one. The Chinese' according to Confucius., also had a postal service at this time and probably sooner. Far older is a service referred to in the Book of Job of the Bible. This system of delivering messages may have been in operation in the Near East 4,000 years ago. Much later, the far traveling Romans had postal services.

Almost any community is bound to think of some kind of postal service sooner or later. Perhaps it begins when someone gives a message .to a traveler and asks him to deliver it to some place on his journey. People love to keep in touch with friends and relatives in faraway places and they are willing to pay a courier to deliver mail yes to and fro,

At least two of the Indian tribes had postal services before the white man came and neither of these tribes could read or writes The Aztecs along the coast posted fish to inland villages. The Incas of Peru posted lima beans marked with messages from one end to the other of their vast empire.

In Europe, the conquering Genghis Khan used poet riders to keep in touch with faraway China. In the 12th century, the University of Paris ran a postal service between the students and their homes, Merchants of the Middle Ages had their postal services to keep in touch with their agents abroad and in 1523 a posta1 service was started for the members of the English royal family. A11 these old time postal services were for private groups and not for use of the general public.

Then in England, in 1632 Thomas Withering started what seems to have been the first public postal services though to him it was a private business. His riders rode from post to post throughout the land and none could send a letter which was paid for by the receiver according to how much it weighed and how far it had been carried. In 1680 William Dockwra improved on this idea. He undertook to have his riders deliver a letter anywhere in England for the price of one penny. Before he knew it, the gover nment had taken over Dochwra’s thriving, business and the postal service has since been their responsibility.

The American Colonies were way ahead of this,  for they had their first government postal service in 1638, It  operated from the home of Richard Fairbanks in Boston and it grew bit by bit into the vast postal service we have today.