The first mailbox appeared about 500 years ago. And although people now mostly send each other emails, it was this simple device that stood at the origins of the development of the postal service.
First mailboxes
There is more than one episode that can be considered the first mention of this invention. Three of them date back to the early 16th century. Then in Florence there were wooden "vestibules", which had a slot on top and were used to collect letters. They were usually installed near churches, and residents of the city often used them to plant anonymous letters there against state traitors.
At about the same time, boxes made of stone were delivered by English sailors near the Cape of Good Hope, which served as a buffer for the exchange of written information with other ships. Holland sailors also had similar adaptations.
The Austrians also used mailboxes already in the 16th century, although they were very modest in size and not stationary, but portable: postmen wore them, attaching them to a belt thrown over their shoulder. The city of Legnica, located on the territory of modern Poland, also has claims to the first mention of a mailbox. There, according to the chronicles, it began to be used as early as 1633. The collection boxes are also mentioned in the archival materials of the Parisian city mail, the date of its foundation is considered to be 1653.
In the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union
The very first mailboxes appeared in the middle of the 19th century on the streets of the largest cities of the Russian Empire: Moscow and St. Petersburg. They soon began to be installed in other regions as well. The first boxes were made of wood, but very quickly they were replaced by metal ones with the image of a postal envelope. And in 1901, orange boxes began to appear. The postal service worked very efficiently: letters and postcards, thrown into boxes, were sent to their destination on the same day by rail.
In those years, the boxes hung in the post offices had two compartments. One was locked with a key and intended for incoming mail. And the second was opened and was used to store letters that were returned after a long absence of the addressee or the inability to find him.
In the 1920s, in Moscow, letter boxes were hung directly on tram cars. When the tram stopped near the post office, the postmen took out the letters for further shipment.
Now in Kaliningrad there is an unusual museum of mailboxes, numbering about 70 exhibits collected around the world. There is no need to pay to enter it, because the exposition is located right on the street, on the wall of one of the buildings in the historical part of the city.
