Rowland Hill (Postman)
Sir Rowland Hill (born December 3, 1795 in Kidderminster , † August 27, 1879 in Hampstead ) was a reformer of the English postal system.
Life
Rowland Hill was born the nephew of General Rowland Hill . He was a teacher until 1833, then became secretary of the Society for the diffusion of useful knowledge and caused a sensation with his book Post office reform, lts importance and practicability (Lond. 1837), in which he described a profound reform of the English postal system, including in particular demanded a uniform postage rate of 1 penny for letters weighing up to 0.5 ounces within the country. That requirement was made law in 1840, and Hill joined the Post. Hill's postal reform also introduced the principle that the sender and not the recipient has to pay the postage. Paying for postage by the recipient was common in England before 1840.
Sir Rowland Hill is known as the "father of the postage stamp ". In 1837 he developed the idea for what is known as the postage receipt, today's postage stamp. After Chalmers ( The penny postage scheme of 1837: what it An Invention or a copy , London 1879) was not Hill, but William Lowther, 2nd Earl of Lonsdale (1787-1872), the inventor of Penny postage.
Hill became secretary to the postmaster general in 1846 , executive secretary of the postal department in 1854 , retired in 1864 and died on August 27, 1879 in Hampstead near London.
Honors
In 1857 Hill was accepted as a member (" Fellow ") in the Royal Society . In 1860 he was knighted as Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath .
In recognition of his service Hill received a national reward of 20,000 pounds sterling (present value of about 1.89 million pounds) was, in Westminster Abbey buried, and in 1881 was there a bust, in 1882 another monument of the stock market over revealed.
In 1968 a stamp of the Principality of Liechtenstein ( Michel -Nr. 503) with a portrait of him appeared as a stamp from the sentence with the name “Pioneers of Philately ”.
literature
- Rowland Hill . In: Illustrirte Zeitung . No. 9 . J. J. Weber, Leipzig August 26, 1843, p. 135-136 ( books.google.de ).
- Sir Rowland Hill, George Birkbeck Hill: Life of Sir Rowland Hill and the history of penny postage. 2 volumes. Thomas de la Rue, London 1880.
- Bernhard Siegert : Relay. The fortunes of literature as the epoch of the post. 1751-1913. Brinkmann and Bose, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-922660-52-5 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Rowland Hill in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ^ Rowland Hill's Postal Reform. ( Memento of the original from April 23, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Information according to the "Philately" advertising flyer from Deutsche Post from 01.2008; see also The making of the first postage stamps .
- ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 1, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 281.
- ^ Entry on Hill; Sir; Rowland (1795–1879) in the Archives of the Royal Society , London
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hill, Rowland |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Reformer of the English postal system |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 3, 1795 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kidderminster |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 27, 1879 |
| Place of death | Hampstead (London) |