On history of first letter boxes: from Europe to Siberia

The letter box is one of the most important devices of postal equipment. One of the prototypes of the modern letter box was the tamburo of Florence, the box for anonymous denunciations. Perhaps, this device gave an idea to a Frenchman, Renoir de Villays, to receive private letters. In 1653 he invented the simplest letter box. In 1848 letter boxes appeared in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The first Russian letter boxes were bulky and inconvenient. Their construction gradually changed. In the second half of the 19th century double letter boxes began to be used instead of the letter boxes which were unlocked with a key. Then they were replaced by the more convenient Swedish letter box. The Swedish letter box has a device at their bottom, which allows collecting correspondence from the box straight into a bag without unlocking the box. In 1910 Russian designer P.N. Shabarov developed an iron letter box with a mechanically opening door at the bottom of the box. In Siberian towns letter boxes appeared in the second half of the 19th century. The first letter box was placed in Tomsk as long ago as on August 6, 1849, only a year later than in St. Petersburg and Moscow. In 1889 -1890 there were nine letter boxes in Tomsk, the correspondence was taken out three times a day: at 8 a.m., at 12 p.m. and at 6 p.m. In 1890 letter boxes were put in Tobolsk in four places of the town. In 1896 there was one letter box in the settlement of Novonikolayevsk. In Irkutsk the first letter boxes appeared in 1889. It is notable that small parcels were dropped into the letter boxes along with letters and post cards. At the beginning of the 20th century private boxes appeared in Siberia. They were meant for receiving incoming correspondence. The postal telegraph office in Barnaul gave letter boxes to individual users. Thus, Siberia practically kept pace with the European part of Russia regarding the introduction of letter boxes. Their construction changed until the most simple and convenient variant was developed.

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