Experimental Airmails
During the first aerial flight in North America by balloon on January 9, 1793, from Philadelphia to Deptford, New Jersey, Jean-Pierre Blanchard carried a personal letter from George Washington to be delivered to the owner of whatever property Blanchard happened to land on, making the flight the first delivery of air mail in the United States.
John Wise piloted an unofficial balloon post flight that took place on July 17, 1859, from St. Louis, USA, to Henderson, New York, a distance of 1,290 km on which he carried a mailbag entrusted to him by the American Express Company. One month later, on August 17, Wise flew from Lafayette, Indiana, to Crawfordsville, Indiana, and carried 123 letters and 23 circulars on board that had been collected by the postmaster Thomas Wood and endorsed "PREPAID" but only one of these historic postal covers was discovered in 1957. In 1959 the United States Postal Service issued a 7 cent stamp (C-54) commemorating Wise's flight in the Jupiter. Balloon mail was also carried on an 1877 flight in Nashville, Tennessee.
Read more about this topic: Airmails Of The United States
Famous quotes containing the word experimental:
“The very hope of experimental philosophy, its expectation of constructing the sciences into a true philosophy of nature, is based on induction, or, if you please, the a priori presumption, that physical causation is universal; that the constitution of nature is written in its actual manifestations, and needs only to be deciphered by experimental and inductive research; that it is not a latent invisible writing, to be brought out by the magic of mental anticipation or metaphysical mediation.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)