Snapshots of the Past

[Postman with bike handing letter to King George V] – Historic Reproduction

[Postman with bike handing letter to King George V], 1911 Sept. 16. — historic print
[Postman with bike handing letter to King George V], 1911 Sept. 16.. Historic print from the Historic Print Archive collection.

(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

This rare historic print captures [Postman with bike handing letter to King George V] in remarkable detail. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.

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[Postman with bike handing letter to King George V]

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A uniformed postman on a bicycle is shown handing a letter to King George V, a striking pairing of royal ceremony and everyday postal work. The picture appeared in *The Illustrated London News* in mid-September 1911, a few months after George V's coronation that June, when the weekly was filling its pages with images of the new reign. Halftone reproduction like this let illustrated papers print photographs cheaply and in quantity, so the image reached a wide readership quickly. Bicycles had by then become a common tool for British letter carriers, which gives the scene a useful glimpse of how the Post Office worked in its day.

Created / published1911 Sept. 16.
Medium1 photomechanical print : halftone.
SubjectsIllus. in: The Illustrated London News, 16 Sept. 1911, p. 439, no. 6. No ref. copy. This record contains unverified data from caption card. Caption card tracings: Gt. Br.--Hist; B.I.; Postal Service; Bicycles.
SourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Original scan1,536 × 1,402 px · prints to 5 × 5 in at 300 dpi
ReferenceAMZ-SOTP-HPA-150108

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