Sir Rowland Hill KCB FRS | |
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| Born | 3 December 1795 Kidderminster, Worcestershire, England |
| Died | 27 August 1879 (aged 83) Hampstead, London, England |
| Resting place | Westminster Abbey |
| Occupation(s) | Schoolteacher, social reformer, postal administrator |
| Known for | Uniform Penny Post |
| Awards | Albert Medal (1864) |
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Sir Rowland Hill, KCB, FRS (3 December 1795 – 27 August 1879) was an English teacher, inventor and social reformer.[1] He campaigned for a comprehensive reform of the postal system, based on the concept of Uniform Penny Post and his solution of pre-payment, facilitating the safe, speedy and cheap transfer of letters. Hill later served as a government postal official, and he is usually credited with originating the basic concepts of the modern postal service, including the invention of the postage stamp.
Hill made the case that if letters were cheaper to send, people, including the poorer classes, would send more of them, thus eventually profits would go up.[2] Proposing an adhesive stamp to indicate pre-payment of postage – with the first being the Penny Black – in 1840, the first year of Penny Post, the number of letters sent in the UK more than doubled.[2] Within 10 years, it had doubled again. Within three years postage stamps were introduced in Switzerland and Brazil, a little later in the US, and by 1860, they were used in 90 countries.[2]
- ^ * Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 465–466.
- ^ a b c "The Penny Post revolutionary who transformed how we send letters". BBC. Retrieved 14 August 2019.