#Firstclass mail list full#

Herodotus described the system in this way: 'It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day's journey and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed'. The Persian system worked using stations (called Chapar-Khaneh), whence the message carrier (called Chapar) would ride to the next post, whereupon he would swap his horse with a fresh one for maximum performance and delivery speed. The Old Testament ( Esther, VIII) makes mention of this system: Ahasuerus, king of Medes, used couriers for communicating his decisions. The role of the system as an intelligence gathering apparatus is well documented, and the service was (later) called angariae, a term that in time came to indicate a tax system.

Mail may not have been the primary mission of this postal service, however. Other sources claim much earlier dates for an Assyrian postal system, with credit given to Hammurabi (1700 BCE) and Sargon II (722 BCE).

Other writers credit his successor Darius I of Persia (521 BCE). He also negotiated with neighboring countries to do the same and had roads built from the city of Post in Western Iran all the way up to the city of Hakha in the East. The best-documented claim ( Xenophon) attributes the invention to the Persian King Cyrus the Great (550 BCE), who mandated that every province in his kingdom would organize reception and delivery of post to each of its citizens. The first credible claim for the development of a real postal system comes from Ancient Persia. Main articles: Royal Road, Chapar-Khaneh, and Angarium Various dates have been given for its first use. The term snail-mail is a retronym to distinguish it from the quicker email. The term email, short for 'electronic mail', first appeared in the 1970s. Postal Service and Canada Post deliver the mail. So in the U.K., the Royal Mail delivers the post, whilst in North America both the U.S. The word Post is derived from Old French poste, which ultimately stems from the past participle of the Latin verb ponere 'to lay down or place'. on a ship) and post to refer to letters for domestic delivery. In the 19th century, the British typically used mail to refer to letters being sent abroad (i.e. Over the next hundred years the word mail began to be applied strictly to the letters themselves and the sack as the mailbag.

#Firstclass mail list full#

In the 17th century, the word mail began to appear as a reference for a bag that contained letters: 'bag full of letter' (1654). The French have a similar word, malle, for a trunk or large box, and mála is the Irish term for a bag. It was spelled in that manner until the 17th century and is distinct from the word male. The word mail comes from the Middle English word male, referring to a travelling bag or pack. The Universal Postal Union (UPU), established in 1874, includes 192 member countries and sets the rules for international mail exchanges as a Specialized Agency of the United Nations. Some countries' postal systems allow for savings accounts and handle applications for passports.

In some countries, a postal, telegraph and telephone (PTT) service oversees the postal system, in addition to telephone and telegraph systems. Postal authorities often have functions aside from transporting letters. With the advent of email, the retronym ' snail mail' was coined. Proof of payment is usually in the form of an adhesive postage stamp, but a postage meter is also used for bulk mailing. Since the mid-19th century, national postal systems have generally been established as a government monopoly, with a fee on the article prepaid. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels.