Royal Society 350th anniversary stamps

This stamp issue is now available from Royal Mail. You can read more about it on our blog, where we are also giving away posters produced to accompany this issue.

Below is the speech given by Philip Parker, Head of Stamp Policy at Royal Mail, at last night's launch of these stamps.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the impressive surroundings of the Royal Society. My name is Philip Parker and on behalf of Royal Mail I would like to welcome you to our evening to launch both a major new stamp issue and to launch a year long Festival of Stamps. Shortly I will introduce Dr Alan Huggins who will describe the Festival, and we are honoured that the President of the Royal Society, Lord Rees, will conclude our welcoming speech.

The brilliant new stamp issue marks the Royal Society's 350th anniversary. I think the stamps speak for themselves. What I'd like to talk to you about is that Royal Mail has, perhaps, more in common with the Royal Society than may at first seem apparent.

Late in 1660 a handful of individuals including Christopher Wren and Robert Boyle met to establish what became known as the Royal Society. Also in 1660, following the restoration of the monarchy, the Post Office Act reorganised the business, the position of Postmaster General was authorised, and soon after this the first postmark was introduced - this stamped the mail to show the day and month of the posting; its purpose was to ensure that the letter carriers did not delay the mail. Similar postmarks were introduced in America, where they were often known as Franklin Marks (named after one Benjamin Franklin, one-time deputy PMG in America, and also President of America, and Fellow of the Royal Society).

So it could be said that the Royal Society and Royal Mail share a birthday, as with the invention of the postmark I would argue that philately and dateable postal history was invented.

The Society's foundation year was, of course, almost two centuries before the first postage stamp.

One person who had the greatest impact on Royal Mail was Sir Rowland Hill, born in the midlands at the very end of the eighteenth century he was a polymath – an educational and social reformer, as well as the reformer of the postal system.

Before 1840 postage rates were very complex, based on distance a letter travelled and number of sheets it was composed of. Also, the receiver of the letter paid for the carriage not the sender. Rowland Hill's dream was to have an efficient postal system which everybody could afford to use. He was also keen to introduce a convenient method of prepaying the postage and suggested "a bit of paper just large enough to bear a stamp, and covered at the back with a glutinous wash". It was he who in 1840 introduced the uniform penny post – that is a single charge to deliver a letter anywhere in the UK – and he introduced the first postage stamp.
 
As a result, the use of the post exploded – before the reform in 1839 the number of letters sent was 76 million. By 1850 this had increased five fold to 350 million and grew rapidly on.

As well as letters, the new media of newspapers, magazines, and books in partworks began to criss-cross the country in the network of new post roads.

And with the rise in communication came the rise in literacy.

So Rowland Hill was a Victorian Tim Berners-Lee (the Royal Society Fellow who invented the internet). Indeed a more recent Postmaster General, Tony Benn, has likened the penny post to the internet of its day – enabling communication cheaply and speedily for the first time across the country, and around the world.

And the post became an essential component of the work of scientists. Using the post, peer review of scientific papers became efficient and quick. Scientists could share data, refine ideas and publish widely. Perhaps the world's greatest letter writer of all time was another Royal Society Fellow, Charles Darwin. Some 14,500 letters he sent are known to exist – has anyone in history ever sent more?

Perhaps one of the most significant letters ever sent was by another Fellow – who is commemorated on the new stamps. The naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace wrote to Darwin from what is now Indonesia in 1858. The letter showed that Wallace had also hit upon the idea of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution, spurring Darwin to organise a joint reading of their papers and, of course, the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 – which Royal Mail marked with a successful stamp issue last year.

So why the emphasis on Sir Rowland Hill? Well, he was made a Fellow of Royal Society in 1857, the official papers proposing him state he was "eminent for his public services in improving the postal arrangements of the county" and also noting he was "distinguished for his acquaintance with the science of Astronomy", which I trust Lord Rees would approve of.

On behalf of Royal Mail I would like to thank the stamp designers, Hat Trick, who worked so tirelessly on this amazing stamp issue, and to thank the Royal Society for hosting this reception in their beautiful headquarters.

I would now like to introduce the Chairman of London 2010 Festival of Stamps, Dr Alan Huggins.