THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 25, 1994 TAG: 9411230090
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Jennifer Dziura
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
JUST AS THE ADVENT of the ballpoint pen made life easier in the 1880s, so follows the self-adhesive postage stamp. Where our ancestors had to moisten postage stamps manually, exposing their tongues to dangerous paper cuts, today we can giddily waltz into the post office and purchase that great wonder of wonders, the self-adhesive stamp.
Anyone who has ever had to lick more than three postage stamps can appreciate the magnitude of this invention. In the olden days, one had to carefully tear apart postage stamps along the perforated lines, and then lick the stamps, activating the adhesive with human saliva. If the process was performed extensively, one was left with an icky taste in the mouth. Now, however, we can peel the stamp from its wax paper backing. This is so simple and useful an idea that it was probably trapped deep in the subconscious minds of stamp users and disgruntled postal workers everywhere, just waiting for the right time to be born.
If this is the case, however, then the idea has been gestating roughly since the invention of the sticker, which has been around roughly since the time Americans stopped wearing powdered wigs in the U.S. Senate. I mean, it's not as if sticker technology has been unavailable to the postal service until just now. It didn't take a professor at M.I.T. to figure out how to make stamps stick to paper without the use of human saliva.
To further add to my confusion, the book in which self-adhesive stamps are sold proclaims ``Convenient: No Licking!'' and ``Easy to Use: No Tearing!'' These pronouncements are undoubtedly true.
What strikes me as odd, however, is that the U.S. Postal Service advertises postage stamps. I mean, stamps are kind of an essential - at any given time, you either need them or you don't.
I doubt that any amount of advertising is going to make people send more mail, but if postal service revenues are really running low, perhaps their advertising could approach the situation more subtly. Commercials could be produced to encourage consumers to send heavy packages to obscure Third World nations. The commercials could say things like ``I bet your grandfather in Latvia would love to hear from you! In fact, I bet he's running low on potting soil! You'd better send him some!''
Faced with a choice between licking or not having to lick the 600 stamps required to send the package, the average consumer would more than happily purchase the new, convenient, no tearing, easy-to affix-to paper, plastic, and most furry animals self-adhesive stamps.
Another odd thing about self-adhesive stamps is that the wax paper on which the stamps are sold says ``Self-adhesive. Do not wet'' about 600 times. It seems to me, however, that people who removed a stamp from its backing, thus enabling the person to see the ``Do not wet'' inscription, would then be holding the stamp on their fingers and therefore be aware that the stamp is sufficiently sticky to adhere to an envelope without the addition of water or (ick) human saliva.
Perhaps the lives of millions will eventually be made easier because of the self-adhesive stamp. Perhaps the invention actually will increase the volume of mail sent through our postal service and further disgruntle innocent postal workers. Perhaps future generations will see even greater stamp technology - holograms, mood stamps, maybe even scratch-n-sniff. by CNB