AIR MAIL STAMPS

Hokitika Guardian, 12 August 1930, Page 7

AIR MAIL STAMPS

EXHIBITION IN LONDON. HISTORY OF FLYING. LONDON, June 19. In the galleries of a Bond Street philatelist there is on view a remarkable loan collection of air mail stamps and covers that tells in outline the history of the conquest of the air. Credit for the first air mail in the world goes to the heroic defenders of Paris in 1870, who organised a balloon oost from the beleagi/red city and a return service by carrier pigeon. Among the relics of this plucky enterprise there has- survived a photographic plate about the size of a visiting card that contains a microscopic impression of a letter. From plates like these messages were printed on “pellicules” to be carried by pigeons, and by the same method of photographic reproduction balloons were loaded with great numbers of letters. In the early days of aeroplanes, it is interesting to recall, this device was advocated as a means of enabling machines to carry a useful quantity of correspondence. Nowadays, when air mails are fairly established in every continent, the problem is to get sufficient ordinary letters to make up a paying load. Other items in the exhibition show that mail-carrying by air has developed mainly under the spur of adventure or adversity. The historic- flights of Alcoek, Ross Smith, De Pinedo, Oobham, and others are represented alongside reminders of emergency air mail services run in Great Britain during the railway strike in 1919, and the general strike of four years ago.