The postcard format is one of industrial society's simple-and-smart inventions - a handy size, with room for a readily-digestible amount of message, scope for expression in choice of image, and, crucially, very shareable. It symbolises non-essential but often emotionally-prized communication.
I have a few exquisite ancient examples picked up in junk sales, and I help create them too, having had three hundred printed just this morning, as it happens, for a charity job.
One of my favourites lying around near the surface of my desk shows George Elgar Hicks's 1860 image of London's general post office, at one minute to six in the evening as people watch their messages about to be taken on their way by the mighty system.
We forget too easily that there is a huge amount of technology implied in this image - not just the technologies of printing and of transport, and the administrative systems of a global (well, imperial) communications network, but also the primary essential technology of the alphabet and all the educational effort invested in ennabling citizens to use it.
So this is a delight to me - Send with Peggy, a service for sending postcards from Facebook, currently for free, with a pre-addressed, pre-stamped reply included (UK and Ireland). Via Tim Davies.
