The General Post Office (GPO) was officially established in England in 1660 by Charles II and it eventually grew to combine the functions of state postal system and telecommunications carrier. Similar General Post Offices were established across the British Empire. In 1969 the GPO was abolished and the assets transferred to The Post Office, changing it from a Department of State to a statutory corporation. In 1980 the telecommunications and postal sides were split prior to the splitting off of British Telecommunications into a totally separate publicly owned corporation the following year as a result of the British Telecommunications Act, 1981. For the more recent history of the postal system in the United Kingdom, see the article Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd.
Originally, the GPO was a monopoly covering the despatch of items from a specific sender to a specific receiver, which was to be of great importance when new forms of communication were invented. The postal service was known as the Royal Mail because it was built on the distribution system for royal and government documents. In 1661 the office of Postmaster General was created to oversee the GPO.
Read more about General Post Office: Early Postal Services, Headquarters, New Communication Systems, Control of Broadcasting, Growth in Telecommunications, Banking Services
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—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“A demanding stranger arrived one morning in a small town and asked a boy on the sidewalk of the main street, “Boy, where’s the post office?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then, where might the drugstore be?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about a good cheap hotel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Say, boy, you don’t know much, do you?”
“No, sir, I sure don’t. But I ain’t lost.””
—William Harmon (b. 1938)
“The office of the prince and that of the writer are defined and assigned as follows: the nobleman gives rank to the written work, the writer provides food for the prince.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)