Episode 1 of 3

Increase in Correspondence Volume

When: November 1839 to February 1840
Where: United Kingdom
Part of: Britain issues the Penny Black, the world's first adhesive postage stamp

Paid internal correspondence increased by 120% between November 1839 and February 1840.

The volume of paid internal correspondence increased dramatically, by 120%, between November 1839 and February 1840. In 1840, the first year of Penny Post, the number of letters sent in the UK more than doubled, reflecting the impact of the new uniform rate and pre-payment system.

Sources

Rowland Hill Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-16
Uniform Penny Post Wikipedia, revision of 2026-07-19

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.