Stamps - A Nation's Calling Card

and the staff we issue here today commemorates the accomplishments of the flights of Eagle and of Columbia the staff is an airmail staff it depicts mankind's John Lee and it was made from a dye which accompanied he go to the moon the commemorative stamp is in a very real way an estimate of the American people it is a means by which they pay homage to those events and to those men who made honors what started out in 1847 as prepayment certificates for delivery of mail have become our nation's calling cards a gallery in miniature of the people events and ideas important to our nation [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] we can also see in stamps a textbook of changing styles of art [Music] some stamps the regular ones in use over many years may have billions of copies made commemorative stamps the special issues have about 120 million copies but first one staff must be made born of the minds and hands of individual artists and craftsmen the subjects for stamps and the artists to visualize them are selected by a stamp Advisory Committee experts in art history printing and philately final selection and approval of a design is made by the Postmaster General engraving printing and processing are done by the Bureau of Engraving and printing from the actual size photographic model the engraver starts his dies these will be the source of a single handmade die proof and millions of billions of copies at the same time each samples are developed [Music] the moon-landing stamp requires seven colors but to compensate for depth of Engraving and for the speed of presses during mass production many samples with slight color variations are prepared a separate dye is made for each plate used on a press here one dye is made for the three colors to be engraved and one die for each of the four colors to be lithographed [Applause] [Music] with the lithographic proof ready all that's needed are the engraved colors to bring the stamp to life [Music] Oh [Music] now this handcrafted precision made miniature artwork is ready for mass production first multiple impression plates for the presses to make the engraving plates the process requires a series of hardening in hot cyanide and transfers of impression [Music] [Music] the transfer is performed by sitter ography riding on iron no gauges no meters experience gives the operator the right feel of the wheel and the plate for these multicolored stamps the steel plate serves as a reproducing master in a series of electrolytic platings nickel based chrome covered press plates are produced each of these plates is etched by pantograph with its own plate number at each corner all sheets printed from this plate carry this plate number on the press the plate is inked by inking rollers one roller for each color each roller is cut to put its color on the proper sections of the plate and nowhere else with each turn the moon-landing plate is inked with three colors the plates surfaces wiped off and the ink in the engraved lines is picked up by the paper precisely over printing the lithographic colors many stamps are printed entirely by steel engraving using rolls of paper instead of sheets the press in one pass puts on the ink and drive put some gum on the back and dries puts an invisible phosphor coating on the front and dries it the phosphor coating is for automatic sorting and cancelling of letters even though only one ink is used the engraving produces differences of shading gives a sense of three dimensions [Music] perforating and cutting require precision tool for the kinds of stamps we've seen so far a separate operation is required there's a special press that prints as many as nine colors from engraved plates and inking rollers it comes the back coats the front inspects each color encoding it perforates the role and cuts it into sheets it does all this in one pass of the paper it's the only press of its kind anyway [Music] [Applause] you impress the final processing the sheets are examined and counted by hand twice they're prepared for sailors pains all books some stamps wind up as coils [Music] in the United States each year more than 28 billion stamps are sold most of them are used on mail but stamp collectors buy enough to give the philatelic section of the Postal Service a profit every year a stamp is a stamp is a stamp or is it much more [Music] [Music] to be or not to be that is the question [Music]