The World is a Postcard
By Rod
Eime
 The
simple postcard has long been a staple medium of personal
communication for the traveller and adventurer wanting to
send greetings home. Postcard collectors, knowing and unknowing,
are only outnumbered by stamp collectors worldwide, making
it an enormously popular hobby.
Today, in this age of instant gratification, will the quaint,
stamped and illustrated note be superseded by the very "deletable"
e-mail, with its horrific vernacular and lazy vulgarity?
Some, including the author, would argue that the e-mail only
serves to remind us that the act of sending a postcard requires
a concerted personal effort, reflecting the consideration
the sender holds for the recipient. After all, an e-mail will
never replace that unique tactile connection only a postcard
can deliver.
Since the birth of the modern postcard in the mid 19th century,
literally millions upon millions of these quaint paper communiqués
have been sent around the world.
Documenting not only travels and adventures, they were used
extensively by the armed forces to send notes of reassurance
and encouragement to loved ones back home.
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Postcard Speak
As with stamps, coins and banknotes, distinct terminology
and jargon developed to describe various aspects of
deltiology.
Here are some common terms to get you up to speed:
View Card
Any card containing a representation of a town, city
or scene. Cards with more than one picture are called
"mulitviews".
Rackcards or Freecards
Advertising giveaways common in cafes and hotel lobbies.
Oilette
A card made to look like a painting with discernable
brushstrokes.
Oversize
Also called "continental".
Any card larger than the standard 6"x4". Early
cards were a standard 3.5"x5.5".
Mechanical
A card with moving parts.
Foxing
Brown, hard-to-remove blemishes, usually mildew.
Die Cut
A card cut to a unique shape, like Santa or a car.
Linen
A fabric style treatment often used to disguise cheap
paper.
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Quite apart from the personal, often touching, messages,
an extensive postcard collection is something of a microcosm
of world history and culture. The study of postcards is even
called Deltiology.
Historically, there exists some debate about just who was
first. Printed message cards did begin appearing in the early
1860s when John P. Charlton of Philadelphia initiated a patent
which was subsequently picked up by a Mr Lipman.
About the same time, a German, Heinrich von Stephen and an
Austrian, Emmanuel Hermann, both hit upon the idea for a pre-printed
correspondence card. The "Poor Man's Telegram" was
born and literally thousands were printed and used almost
immediately.
Postcards, in a variety of pre-printed forms, with and without
illustrations, were now becoming common, particularly in Europe
and the USA.
 The
illustrated souvenir card received its most significant boost
in 1889, when Eiffel Tower cards were mailed in their thousands
by awestruck visitors to the Paris Exposition that same year.
The popularity of that single issue card secured the postcard
in the form we now know today.
Consequently, World's Fair postcards from the era are now
amongst the most highly prized items by collectors.
Deltiologists refer to the 1890s as the "Pioneer Era"
of postcards, when shapes, forms and sizes were beginning
to take shape. The majority of cards issued during that time
had one side devoted to the image and message, with the other
to the address and stamp. Instructions such as "write
address here" were also common.
After the turn of the century, the term "Post Card"
was officially coined to describe privately printed cards
for postal use and it was about this time that the collecting
of postcards really began, with many families displaying postcard
albums alongside the family album at home. This fertile era
is often referred to as the "Golden Age".
Postcards were, by then, an accepted, even expected, means
of documenting significant events and locations. Traders used
them for advertising, governments used them for propaganda
and travellers used them to send greetings home from abroad.
 Disasters
such as the Titanic and World Trade Centre induced minor postcard
frenzies. Two days after September 11, you couldn't buy a
WTC postcard anywhere.
Public taste, economic constraints, government regulation
and technological limitations all guided the evolution of
the postcard through the first half of the 20th century.
The "divided back" "white border" and
"linen" eras came and went, leaving us with its
most enduring form, the "photochrome", or shiny
colour card, which first appeared in Union Oil Company service
stations in 1939 and further expanded after World War II.
Ironically, with the advent of the Internet, postcard collectors
are now able to seek each other out and swap, trade and exchange
to their hearts' content. Once a drawn-out lengthy wait, collectors
can now make contact and initiate a trade within minutes instead
of weeks. Perhaps then, collectors and traders are using this
potentially destructive medium to further their ancient art
of paper communication?
There's no doubting the Internet is here to stay, but will
it have the corrosive effect on traditional "snail mail"
like colour TV and home video had on the cinema? Sure, the
movie industry was forced to repackage itself, shedding old
favourites like the drive-in and suburban picture hall.
Other paper-based products like newspapers and magazines
are feeling the pinch too, as impatient info-hungry professionals
gobble their news via the computer pipe.
What about the postcard? Will it be relegated to museums,
libraries and art galleries as a 20th century curiosity? Or
will it rebound as people rediscover the simple pleasure of
hand-crafted communication via the letterbox? Only time will
tell.
Rod Eime loves to send and receive postcards. Visit
his page.
Links
Vendor
of Classic Postcards
Deltiologists'
Site
Publisher
of Australian Freecards
Informal
Postcard Swap Group
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