The young woman behind the desk at my local post office looked bewildered. “I think we’ve got some somewhere”, she mumbled before returning with a pile of dusty envelopes. “Nobody really asks of these any more,” she admitted.
A century ago this month the world’s very air that is first service began
Passed beneath the counter and into my hand was a typical example of a mode of communication who has all but vanished. Thanks to Skype, texts and e-mails, there’s need that is little for the small pale blue envelopes with the diagonal red and blue stripes around the border, extra thin blue writing paper and multitude of stamps and post marks that constitutes an air mail letter. Dr. Richard Saundry, editor for the British Air Mail Society Journal, believes that we’re at risk of losing something both powerful and romantic.
“I think it is very regrettable that nobody appears to use air mail any more”, he tells me. “We are now living in a rather age that is lazy the other has been lost. There’s a huge thrill and excitement, and a kind of romance in receiving an air mail letter through the opposite side around the globe in your door mat. The internet just can’t replace that.”
A hundred years ago this month the world’s very first air mail service began. Flying from Allahabad, near Delhi, only seven years following the Wright brothers made their first forays to the air, the plane, flown by a pilot that is french Henri Pequet, travelled 15 miles to Naini. Up to speed were six . 5 thousand letters including one compiled by Motilal Nehru, father associated with president that is first of India.
The united kingdom wasn’t far behind utilizing the first air mail flight lifting removed from Hendon to Windsor later that year. Today the speed that these pioneers succeeded in reaching to get letters around the world is seldom beaten. Richard during the fresh air Mail Society told me of a letter he possesses that has been sent from Buenos Aires to China in 1938. The letter arrived in 13 days- a feat that might be hard to match now without paying reasonably limited to a courier company that is private.
As a young child I was thinking there clearly was nothing more exciting than getting letters that are occasional my aunt in South Africa. Continue Reading