The Postal Service & Stamps: Among London's Top Inventions

An article by TimeOut magazine (a city guide originally conceived in London), claims that the British Postal Service and the Penny Black Stamp as one of the city's top inventions. Among the other inventions were: 

1. Soft toilet paper. St Andrew Mills, Walthamstow
It’s 1941, and German bombs are raining down on a terrified capital. However, unbeknownst to ordinary Londoners, technicians at the stateof- the-art St Andrew paper mill in Walthamstow are working on a secret project that will bring some comfort to the nation. One year later, success! Two-ply soft paper is produced for the very first time and soon issued to Britain’s top brass.

2. Traffic lights. Parliament Square

December 1868, and such is the crush of horses, carts and cockneys selling stuff in Parliament Square that the Home Secretary erects the world’s first ever traffic lights at the junction of Bridge Street, Parliament Street and Great George Street. They are 22 feet high, feature semaphore arms and the lamps are powered by gas. Nonetheless, Londoners ignore the lights until they explode, seriously injuring a policeman.

3. Colour television. 3 Crescent Wood Rd, Sydenham

After inventing black-and-white TV in Frith Street, Soho, in 1925, Scottish genius John Logie Baird moved south of the river to work on the logical next step. Perhaps unwisely, Baird based himself in a villa directly opposite the Dulwich Wood House pub, and it took him a further 15 years to nail it. Today, in an ironic twist, the Dulwich Wood House is one of the few pubs in the whole of south London not to have a massive colour TV in it.

 

4. The Post.  Bruce Castle, Lordship Lane, Tottenham

On the edge of rural Tottenham, the impressive Bruce Castle was the home of postal reformer Rowland Hill. After being asked by the government to find a way of getting letters from one place to another, he came up with the first stamp, the Penny Black, in 1840. Go there today for the collection of old post boxes in a shed, especially the racy blue one.

5. Automatic fire sprinkler. 57d Hatton Garden
Sir Hiram Maxim, the American inventor and boxing bigamist who became a naturalised Brit, bequeathed the world a bloody inheritance when he invented the Maxim machine gun in his Hatton Garden workshop in 1884. However, as well as inventing the lightbulb before Thomas Edison (or so Maxim claimed), he made up for some of the misery caused by his weapon with this sprinkler device that has saved countless lives since.

6. Fish and chips. Whitechapel

In 1860, teenage Eastern European immigrant and culinary visionary Joseph Malin combined the already established Jewish staple of fried fish with the humble spud, and opened an eatery in Cleveland Way, Whitechapel. Although a rival claim was made in Preston, Lancashire, the National Federation of Fish Friers recognised Malin’s in 1968 as the world’s first fish and chip shop.

Source: TimeOut London