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Pony Express -

Pony Express rider Frank E. Webner sitting on his horse in 1861. The Pony Express service was used to deliver messages, newspapers, and mail using relays of horse-mounted riders across the Old West. Despite Buffalo Bill being an enthusiastic promoter of this four-legged means of communication, the service operated less than two years, from April 3, 1860 to October 26, 1861.

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Horse-drawn carriage -

A US postman delivers mail by horse-drawn carriage, around 1890.

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Imperial Penny Post -

A wagon is loaded with mail for the inaugural dispatch of the new GPO (General Post Office) Imperial Penny Post service in London, which began in 1898.

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Late 19th-century high tech -

A postal worker at the rear of pneumatic mail tubes. These were first introduced in Philadelphia in 1893 and in New York City in 1897. They were used to carry mail in bulk between sorting offices.

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Winter delivery -

A horse-drawn mail wagon and its crew making deliveries in New York City during the bitter winter months of 1900.

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Messenger boy -

A smiling and eager young British postal messenger boy on an assignment in 1910.

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On the rounds in Thailand -

An early 20th-century postman in Thailand on his rounds emptying mail boxes.

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Pedal power -

Postal messenger boys wait for deliveries on their bicycles in Norfolk, Virginia, during the summer of 1911.

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Parcels to pack -

A 1914 postal worker in Washington, D.C. contemplates his workload during a pause in sorting.

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Scooter service -

Four special delivery postmen for the US Postal Service try out their new motorized scooters, a novel mode of transport invented in the early 20th-century.

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Front gate fräulein -

A female postwoman delivering mail in Berlin, Germany in 1915 during the First World War.

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Carrier pigeons -

The use of carrier pigeons for communications purposes flourished during the First World War. Here, an Italian combatant closes the tube attached to the bird's leg containing the message. War pigeons were the unsung heroes of the conflict when radio use was impossible.

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Flight attendant -

British Army carrier pigeons being attended to in their horse-drawn lofts in France during the First World War.

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Horse power -

A female postal worker with her horse poses for a photograph in Los Angeles in 1917.

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Electric post -

A female postal employee in Berlin takes to an automobile driven by accumulators, an early version of today's electric vehicles. This was way back in 1917!

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First airmail service -

Airmail took off on May 15, 1918, when the world’s first regularly scheduled airmail route was inaugurated under US government auspices between New York and Washington, D.C., with a stop at Philadelphia (pictured).

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Mail service down under -

This 1925 photograph shows mail being put aboard a biplane at Sydney for delivery in Adelaide the following day. The distance between the two Australian cities is about 1,126 km (700 mi).

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Caravan parked -

A mail caravan pauses on the remote and barren plains of Iceland in 1922. Lone riders were often left in charge of several pack horses laden with boxes full of letters, postcards, and parcels.

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High-class mail -

A postman delivering mail at Dungeness Lighthouse in Kent, England in 1928, long before lighthouses were automated.

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Mail in Madrid -

Two young Spanish children receiving their mail from an elderly postman in Madrid, around 1929.

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Crossing seas and oceans -

Post delivered in 1931 by the London, Midland & Scottish Railway's Irish Mail train is manually loaded onto the TSS Scotia, bound for Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire) in Ireland. On June 1, 1940, the Scotia was bombed by German aircraft during the Dunkirk evacuation.

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Stationery on the move -

Government stationery office workers pictured in the late 1930s carrying out the printed War Loan Conversion Scheme forms to be stacked in mail vans at Harrow, north London, under police escort.

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Mounted mail -

A postman on horseback delivers letters to a mother and daughter in the doorway of their remote cottage at Tregaron, South Wales. Back in 1935, the Natystalwen Horse Post took 10 hours to deliver to 10 addresses in the mountains.

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Letter to go -

A woman in an outlying district of Aberyswyth in Ceredigion, Wales, posts a letter in a mail box on the back of a bus. The service, which operated in the 1930s, helped people in remote villages to catch the daily mail collection.

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New sorting system -

Postal workers using the new Chatillon system of industrial mail sorting and distribution platforms at Gare de Lyon in Paris in 1934. The system was a forerunner of today's modern industrial mail sorting platforms.

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Two-wheel delivery -

Facing the floods in Gloucestershire, England is a postman delivering Christmas letters using his motorbike during the wet winter of 1936.

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Lost post -

A lone postman tries to deliver letters to premises in Watling Street in the City of London after a night time German air raid in May 1941. The dome of St Paul's Cathedral is in the background.

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Vatican Postal Service -

A rare glimpse of the Vatican Postal Service in Vatican City in the 1940s. The Vatican post office has operated its own postal service and issued its own postage stamps since 1929.

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Flying high -

A postman stands by his mail van in England as a Westland-Sikorsky helicopter arrives to collect the morning mail. This was early 1948, when helicopter transport was still in its infancy and airmail by chopper an entirely new concept.

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Internal mail -

Two postal workers in Washington, D.C. start their rounds delivering internal mail at the Pentagon building in December 1950.

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Romantic -

A Parisian postman on his rounds in the French capital in June 1956 recognizes a love letter because of its perfume.

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Parcel post -

A weary-looking British Rail inspector contemplates the build up of parcel mail waiting for delivery in central London during the summer of 1965.

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Mailbox system -

A collection of rural delivery mail boxes of varying size displayed on a country road in the southern United States.

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A load off his feet! -

English postal worker Jack Kitchen tries out the new post office trolley in Cheshire. Back in 1966, the maximum load a postman was allowed to carry on his back was 15 kg (35 lb), but the trolley took twice that amount. No wonder he's smiling.

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You've got mail! -

Mailbags are carried onto a waiting U.S. Army helicopter for distribution to American infantrymen positioned behind enemy lines in Vietnam in the late 1960s. 

Sources: (National Museum of the U.S. Navy) (HistoryNet)

See also: Vintage travel posters and luggage labels from yesteryear

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