The Penny Black

The Penny Black changed the post forever. Before it, letters were paid for by the recipient, and the cost varied with distance. Rowland Hill's uniform penny post made prepayment cheap and simple, and the adhesive stamp made it practical.

The design is an engraved profile of Queen Victoria, printed in black from a line-engraved plate, with letters in the lower corners identifying the stamp's position on the sheet. This example is four-margined and lightly cancelled in red.

Around 68 million Penny Blacks were printed, yet survival is modest because the black ink made cancellation difficult to see; the experiment was abandoned within a year in favour of the Penny Red. The stamp's real legacy is the idea of a small, standard, prepaid token of communication — the ancestor of every postage stamp since.