Use in The United States
In August 1852 an act of the U.S. Congress authorized the Postmaster General to provide "suitable letter envelopes with such watermarks or other guards against counterfeits... with the addition of the value or denomination of the postage stamps so printed or impressed thereon...". The first result was the 1853 Nesbitt issues of stamped envelopes, named after the private contractor who produced them for the government. When you combine the different envelope sizes, knives, colors, dies to print the indicia, and denominations there are literally thousands of different stamped envelopes produced for the U.S.
Read more about this topic: Stamped Envelope
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united and/or states:
“The United States is not a nation to which peace is a necessity.”
—Grover Cleveland (1837–1908)
“An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband’s dinners.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)