Few growing up in Facebook World would associate scrawlings on a piece of paper tucked into an envelope with the words 'post' or 'message' – but for the past few hundred years, the postal sector has played a crucial role in people’s and businesses’ everyday lives.
Few growing up in Facebook World would associate scrawlings on a piece of paper tucked into an envelope with the words 'post' or 'message' – but for the past few hundred years, the postal sector has played a crucial role in people’s and businesses’ everyday lives.
Although old-fashioned snail mail could have provided only the merest inkling of the far-reaching impact of digital communication, it too was critical for the social and economic development of countries around the world.
Today is World Post Day, celebrated each year on 9 October, the anniversary of the establishment of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) in 1874 in the Swiss capital, Bern.
We celebrate it by offering some fascinating postal facts and figures:
* The first telegraph office in South Africa was opened in 1860 in a little kiosk in Adderley Street, Cape Town.
* During 1878, two years after Alexander Graham Bell had invented the telephone Mr G A Boettger, a jeweller in Cape Town, imported some “Microphonic Apparatus” models or telephones from Siemens. In 1880 there were eleven sets of these telephones in use. By 1887 there were some 356 sets in use.
* The first telephone exchange in South Africa opened in Port Elizabeth on 2 May 1882 at the corner of Main and Jetty Streets, in a building later known as Union Castle Corner. It was demolished and replaced by the General Post Office building in 1900. The telephone exchange had a capacity for 50 lines and it started off with 44 subscribers.
* The first airmail delivery in Africa was between Kenilworth and Muizenburg Post Office. A total of 2 597 special postcards to mark the occasion were printed. On 27 December 1911, Evelyn (Bok) Driver delivered by air, 729 of the special postcards to the Muizenberg Post Office, taking off from the Kenilworth Race Course and landing at Oldham’s Field on the verges of Zandvlei in Muizenberg, a distance of almost 13km. The entire flight lasted 7.5 minutes.
* Stamps issued by the South African Post Office in 2012 were South African Native National Congress (SANNC) 100; Reverend John Dube – 1st President of the SANNC; George Pemba 100th Anniversary; National Symbols of South Africa; Commercial and Medicinal Plants of South Africa; South Africa’s Role in Astronomy; Transit of Venus.
Sources: Wikipedia and saeverything.co.za
