Short history of the postcard

SHORT HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN POSTCARDTricks for guessing the date of a postcard?

Really Early Beginnings

1848-1860  The first known postcard in the United States is mailed. There are no official regulations regarding cards in these years and were treated as letters. These cards are now referred to as Mailed Cards.

Few examples exist – most were advertising and weren’t collected

Technology

Lithography, which was invented only a half century earlier was now perfected and in common use. Use of limestone plates to produce colored cards

The new science of photography spread rapidly and many eagerly experimented with various means of reproducing it.

LIPMAN CARDS   1861-1872 On February 27, 1861, the United States

Congress passed a law permitting privately printed cards, one ounce or under, to be sent though the mail. One-cent postage was required for delivery distances less than 1500 miles, and two cents postage for longer distances.

The earliest known postmark on these cards is of October 25, 1870 from Richmond, Indiana. This time the front contained a pictorial advertisement of an Esterbrook Steel Pen.

The Lipman card died quickly when in 1873 the U.S.P.S. issued its own Postal Card.

U.S. postal cards -- .01Privately printed card -- .02: Any privately printed postcard that had a personal message on it was considered a letter. This severely limited the popularity of postcards.

Pioneer Cards -- 1873-1897

Pioneer Cards refer to most postcards prior to 1898 – Private Mailing Cards

Factors:• Growth of printing industry • General rise of the middle class though an expanding industrial economy. This provided a receptive audience for the marketing of imagery

Small card photographs

Chromolithographic prints

Trade cards

Reward cards

Exhibition

Souvenir cards

Censored

FRENCH POSTCARDS

The French magazine La Beaute, was a major source for nude pictures. They sold photographic images of poses in the nude for the use of artists, but they were greatly coveted by the general public.

Though made in Europe their largest market was in the United States. Most of their backs are blank without any postal markings making them difficult to date.

They are referred to as postcards only because of the similar size, but they were illegal to mail. Actual postcards with nudes on them did not appear until 1900 or so.

German Dominance

Otto von Bismarck brought with his rise to power, brought in the latest in printing technology.

Germany would eventually lead all of Europe in manufacturing with thirty major factories, some with 1500 employees, producing postcards alone. Production would rise to billions of cards a year.

American publishers formed close ties with German print houses, sending them some of their best artists to assist in card production.

Approximately 75 percent of all postcards used in the United Stated prior to World War One were printed in Germany.

CHROMOLITHOGRAPHYThis country’s first chromolithograph, a print of three colors or more, was made in Boston in 1840. There was a great deal of work involved in their production.

All were hand drawn, and each color was printed off an individual litho-stone requiring tight registration. It was not uncommon for elaborate single images to require the use of fourteen stones for subtle coloration effects. Some images were created from as many as thirty stones or more.

EXPOSITION CARDS   1873-1898

In 1893 one hundred and twenty different images of Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition were printed on government postal cards by distributors. Privately printed, these exposition cards required two cents postage but it didn’t hurt sales as hundreds of thousands were purchased. The most notable of these cards were the official chromolithographs of Charles W. Goldsmith.

We are starting to get closer to what we know as postcards

Golden Age of the Postcard 1898-1913

The year 1898 marked the beginning of a publishing boom as the U.S. Government reluctantly gave up its monopoly on printing postcards.

3 1/4 by 5 1/2 inches and printed in light colors of buff, cream, or gray.

Many publishers could not afford to redesign their inventory of cards to meet the new regulations and they went out of business.

Larger images were introduced to the front of cards, though many mailing cards retained the format of the pioneers with a small illustration and a large blank area for writing. Private Mailing Card (1898-1901)

Real Photo postcard

George Eastman who is most responsible for the development of the real-photo postcard.

1902

POST CARD (Undivided Back)   1901-1907

Postcard Craze

Postcards as Social Media -

ROTOGRAVURE   1904

In 1846 R. Hoe found a method of placing type on a cylinder (stereotyping) and the first rotary press was born. Its advantage over other presses was its speed.

Lithography at this time could make very little use of rotary presses because the stones used could not be bent, and the alternative metal plates were delicate and wore out too quickly.

In 1895 Karl Klic discovered a way to infuse a halftone screen into photosensitive gelatin tissue that was exposed to the image before being adhered to the cylinder.

Photography and printing technology had also advanced to a point that enabled high quality images to be produced in tremendous numbers and they were. Card dealers began to outnumber booksellers.

Over 7 billion postcards were mailed worldwide in 1905, almost one billion in the United States alone; and this does not account for those that ended up in collections rather than the mailbox.

Some have speculated that perhaps up to 50 percent of all postcards produced were collected.

PAYNE-ALDRICH ACT OF 1909

What killed the postcard fad?

To gain an edge on foreign competition American printers petitioned for price protection and in 1909 The Payne-Aldrich Tariff was imposed on postcards.

American printers, who boasted, we can make it here, soon found themselves unable to produce enough cards of the same quality to fill the gap. Alien contract laws prohibited German printers from bringing their skills here.

As stores and jobbers panicked they began stocking up on as many cards as they could before the tariff took effect. This glut in supply wound up severely depressing the price.

Rise of the phone

Winds of War

Postcards Between the Wars

Before, during and after World War 1, the American printing industry was far behind its German counterparts.

Postcards are generally of lower quality, both in paper and printing technique.

At one point the United States did not have enough ink to print money let alone color postcards. At war’s end the German ink industry was devastated along with their printing houses.

WHITE BORDER CARDS   1913 - 1930’s

Color Most postcards inks during this period were with dry pigments ground into oils or resins. Dyes were another source of color. Their greater color density created much stronger effects than pigment could. Unfortunately when used for printing their more watery consistency allows them to soak into a paper’s fibers instead of lying on the surface as traditional pasty inks. This in turn led to dull soft looking images.

Borders Early private mailing cards included full bleeds that became common after the divided back was introduced. But producing cards with bleeds required high production skills.

Being less skilled, American printers began manufacturing cards with noticeable increase in white borders.

LINEN CARDS   1931-1959

Curt Teich finally solved the problem with inks by embossing paper with a linen texture before printing. The embossing created more surface area, which allowed the new heatset inks to dry even faster. The quicker drying time allowed these

dyes to remain on the paper’s surface thus retaining their superior strength, which give Linens their telltale bright colors.

They were not to be printed in numbers again until the later 1940’s when the war effort ceased consuming most of the country’s resources.

Even though the images on linen cards were based on photographs, they contained much handwork of the artists who brought them into production

. There is of course nothing new in this; what it notable is that they were to be the last postcards to show any touch of the human hand on them.

Modern Postcards 1946-1990

Following WWII and with the rise of printing costs, a new process of color "Photochrome" (called Chrome or Modern Chromes) appeared.  "Chrome" postcards started to take over the marketplace immediately after they were launched by the Union Oil Company. Sold in their western service stations, they were easily produced, were of high photo quality and of most importance, they were in true living color! 

As Americans took to the road in ever increasing numbers, postcards were almost exclusively being manufactured with the tourist in mind.

Post Modern Postcards 1991- present

While postcards continue to be produced in great number, they lie in the shadow of their former glory. Technology is now creating new routes to take us to new places that we cannot seem to keep pace with.