Cards with messages had been sporadically created and posted
by individuals since the creation of postal services. The earliest known
picture postcard was a hand-painted design on card, posted in London to the
writer Theodore Hook in 1840 bearing a penny black stamp. He probably created
and posted the card to himself as a practical joke on the postal service, since
the image is a caricature of workers in the post office.
In the United States, a picture or blank card stock that held
a message and sent through the mail at letter rate first began when a card
postmarked in December 1848 contained printed advertising on it. The first
commercially produced card was created in 1861 by John P. Charlton of
Philadelphia, who patented a postal card, selling the rights to Hymen Lipman,
whose postcards, complete with a decorated border, were labeled "Lipman's
postal card." These cards had no images.
In Britain postcards without images were issued by Post
Office, and were printed with a stamp as part of the design, which was included
in the price of purchase. The first known printed picture postcard, with an
image on one side, was created in France in 1870 at Camp Conlie by Léon
Besnardeau (1829–1914). Conlie was a training camp for soldiers in the Franco-Prussian
war. They had a lithographed design printed on them containing emblematic
images of piles of armaments on either side of a scroll topped by the arms of
the Duchy of Brittany and the inscription "War of 1870. Camp Conlie.
Souvenir of the National Defence. Army of Brittany". While these are
certainly the first known picture postcards, there was no space for stamps and
no evidence that they were ever posted without envelopes.
In the following year the first known picture postcard in
which the image functioned as a souvenir was sent from Vienna. The first
advertising card appeared in 1872 in Great Britain and the first German card
appeared in 1874. Cards showing images increased in number during the 1880s.
Images of the newly built Eiffel Tower in 1889 and 1890 gave impetus to the
postcard, leading to the so-called "golden age" of the picture
postcard in years following the mid-1890s.
