Symbols
- Australia — a styled red letter "P" on a white circle, "P" standing for "Post".
- Canada — a combination of a bird wing and an aircraft wing in a red circle and flanked by the words Canada Post / Postes Canada. Previously the words Canada, Canada Post, or Canada Post Corporation) were used on post boxes. Until the early 1970s, post boxes had the words "Royal Mail" and the Royal Coat of Arms of Canada.
- Continental Europe — most designs include a Post horn, like those used by postmen to announce their arrival. In Germany the post horn is the only element indicating post services.
- Netherlands — an orange triangle with "postnl" and a royal crown in it.
- Ireland — from 1922 the Irish harp entwined with the letters "SE" for Saorstát Éireann, then "P&T" Gaelic script for Post and Telegraphs and from 1984 An Post with their wavy lines logo, often on the door as a raised casting.
- Russia — logo of Russian Post (Почта России) written white on blue and black on yellow 1st class mail boxes.
- Japan — a "T" with bar above it (〒).
- United Kingdom — all post boxes display the Royal Cypher of the reigning monarch at the time of manufacture. Exceptions are the Anonymous pillar boxes of 1879–1887, where the cypher was omitted, and all boxes for use in Scotland manufactured after 1952 (including replicas of the 1866 Penfold design) which show the Queen's Crown of Scotland instead of the Royal Cypher for Elizabeth II. Private boxes emptied by Royal Mail do not have to carry a cypher. Royal Mail post boxes manufactured since 1994 carry the wording "Royal Mail", normally above the aperture (lamp boxes) or on the door (pillar boxes). Before this date all post boxes, with the exception of the Anonymous pillar boxes, carried the wording "Post Office".
- United States — the United States Postal Service (USPS) eagle logo, except that boxes for Express Mail use the USPS Express Mail logo.
Read more about this topic: Post Box
Famous quotes containing the word symbols:
“Many older wealthy families have learned to instill a sense of public service in their offspring. But newly affluent middle-class parents have not acquired this skill. We are using our children as symbols of leisure-class standing without building in safeguards against an overweening sense of entitlement—a sense of entitlement that may incline some young people more toward the good life than toward the hard work that, for most of us, makes the good life possible.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“My image is a statement of the symbols of the harsh, impersonal products and brash materialistic objects on which America is built today. It is a projection of everything that can be bought and sold, the practical but impermanent symbols that sustain us.”
—Andy Warhol (1928–1987)
“I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)