DC -- Natl Postal Museum -- Exhibit (Case): Letters With Wings (Preview):
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- Description of Pictures: Letters With Wings: The Dream of Airmail, 1918-1938
In 2018, the National Postal Museum will celebrate the 100th anniversary of regularly scheduled airmail by presenting a special exhibition tentatively titled "Letters With Wings".
These cases contain a sampling of the material that will be included and the themes to be addressed.
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- WINGS_170405_01.JPG: Letters With Wings:
The Dream of Airmail, 1918-1938
In 2018, the National Postal Museum will celebrate the 100th anniversary of regularly scheduled airmail by presenting a special exhibition tentatively titled "Letters With Wings".
These cases contain a sampling of the material that will be included and the themes to be addressed.
- WINGS_170405_05.JPG: Pilots
Pilot Eddie Gardner poses with a Curtiss JN-4H "Jenny" mail plane in leather leggings, helmet, and goggles. Heavy gear was required year-round to protect pilots from the elements. They routinely flew at altitudes of 5,000-8,000 feet in open cockpits.
Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner, c 1918
- WINGS_170405_09.JPG: Thompson died in a mail crash on September 27, 1923, fifteen months after his last entry.
Pilot Harwell Thompson's log book, January 29, 1918 - June 17, 1922
- WINGS_170405_16.JPG: Promotion
During the early years of airmail service, many Americans remained unconvinced that it was worth the added cost relative to ordinary postage rates. Advertising images such as this one depicting letters raking flight helped promote airmail service as efficient and modern.
Advertising poster, c 1949-1958
- WINGS_170405_18.JPG: From May 15-31, 1938 Postmaster General James A. Farley and he nation celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the first airmail flights with National Airmail Week. Congratulatory messages poured in to postal headquarters from all over the country, all of them flown by air. National Air Mail Week was intended to demonstrate that the service was no longer experimental, but had instead become the backbone of the American mail system.
James A. Farley with National Air Mail Week letters, 1938
- WINGS_170405_31.JPG: Letters with Wings
The Dream of Airmail, 1918-1938
In less than two decades, the Post Office Department developed airmail from an experimental service into a profitable business an, in the process, laid the foundations of today's civilian airline industry. By 1938, the airmail network's spanned the entire country and extended to more than three dozen foreign countries.
In 2018 the National Postal Museum will celebrate the 100th anniversary of regularly scheduled airmail by presenting a special exhibition tentatively titled "Letters With Wings." These cases contain a sampling of the material than will be included and the themes to be addressed.
- WINGS_170405_36.JPG: Airmail Envelopes
Red- and blue-bordered airmail envelopes were introduced on August 1, 1928 in response to customer complaints that some airmail letters were not being conveyed by plane. Postal clerks who sorted thousands of envelopes an hour did not always notice airmail postage, and the patriotic border was intended to catch their eye. The officially approved design featured shapes that are variously described in period documents as diamonds, lozenges, and parallelograms. This was not a requirement, however, and many colorful and striking variations can be found, such as these checkerboard and sawtooth patterns.
- WINGS_170405_41.JPG: This letter survived an airmail plane crash at Marquette, Nebraska in February 1928 and was delivered.
Airmail wreck cover, 1928
- WINGS_170405_46.JPG: The United States issued this stamp to mark the Graf Zeppelin's 1933 visit to the Chicago World's Fair, and many copies were used to send souvenir mail on the flight.
50c "Graf Zeppelin" die proof, 1933
- WINGS_170405_48.JPG: Airmail Stamps
A transcontinental system of lighted airway beacons made night airmail possible in the 1920s. The Post Office Department issued a red and blue stamp depicting one of these beacons, located in Wyoming's Rocky Mountains, on July 25, 1928.
5c Beacon on Rocky Mountains plate proofs, 1928
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