Issued by India

Issued on Jan 4, 2009

Issued for : India post is proud to issue commemorative postage stamp on Sir Louis Braille.

Credits :
Stamp : Shankha Samanta
FDC & Cancellation : Alka Sharma

Type : Stamp, Mint Condition

Colour : Multi colour

Denomination : 500 Paise

Stamps Printed : 3.0 Million

Printing Process : Photogravure

Printer : India Security Press, Nasik

Name : Louis Braille

Born on Jan 4, 1809 at Coupvray, France

Died on Jan 6, 1852 at Paris, France

About : 

• There was a time, not long ago when most people thought that blind people could never learn to read. People thought that the only way to read was to look at words with your eyes.
• Blind persons, correctly addressed as ‘visually impaired‘ or ‘visually challenged‘ use an embossed script for reading and writing. Named after its inventor, Louis Braille, it is known as the Braille script.
• Louis Braille, a French man, was born in Coupvray, near Paris, on January 4, 1809. India and the entire world were, thus, celebrating the 200^th Birth Anniversary of this great inventor.
• Louis‘s father, Simon Braille was harness and saddle-maker. One day when Louis Braille was a small boy, he crept into his father’s workshop to play. He had often seen his father making shoes and he decided he would like to try. He picked up an awl, a sharp, pointed tool used for making holes in leather. As he bent over, the awl slipped and pierced his eye, destroying it forever. Some time later his other eye became infected by the first and he lost his sight altogether. He was aged only 4, but still on to become one of the most famous Frenchmen ever to live.
• Despite his sight loss the young child attended the village school with his sighted friends for two years. Eventually it became clear that he would not be able to learn much more, largely because he could not read or write. Without an education it was likely that he would have to beg on the streets, like other blind people at that time.
• At the age of ten he was lucky enough to be sent to a school for blind boys in Paris, one of the first in the world. Conditions in the school were very harsh. The building was damp and unhealthy and discipline was severe. Pupils who misbehaved were beaten, locked up and given stale bread and water. In fact, this kind of discipline was common in all schools at that time. Life was harsh for nearly everyone and most sighted children left school at the age of 12 and went to work in factories or in mines.
• At the school in Paris the blind pupils were taught practical skills like chair caning and slipper making so that when they left the school they would be able to make a living. Once a week, after lunch, the boys were taken for a walk in the park, linked together by a long rope.
• They were also taught to read but not to write. The letters they read were raised above the surface of the page so that they could feel them with their fingertips. This form of writing was very difficult to read because it was very hard to tell the letters apart. The letters were printed by pressing copper wire into one side of the paper to make a raised shape on the other. Because each individual letter had to be made out of wire first and because the wire then had to be forced into the paper with a press blind people were unable to write anything for themselves.
• One day something happened that changed the lives of blind people forever. In 1821, a soldier named Charles Barbier visited Louis‘ school. He brought with him a system he had invented called “night writing“. Night writing had originally been designed so that soldiers could pass instructions along trenches at night without having to talk and give their positions away. It consisted of twelve raised dots which could be combined to represent different sounds. Unfortunately it proved to be too complex for soldiers to master and was therefore rejected by the army.
• The young Louis Braille quickly realised how useful this system of raised dots could be, provided it was simplified. Over the next few months he experimented with different systems until he found an ideal system using six dots. He continued to work on the scheme for several years after, developing separate codes for maths and music. In 1827 the first book in braille was published.
• Even so, the new system did not catch on immediately. Sighted people did not understand how useful braille could be and one head teacher at the school even banned the children from learning it. Fortunately this seemed to have the effect of encouraging the children even more and they took to learning it in secret. Eventually even sighted people began to realise the benefits of the new system.
• Not only could people with sight problems read braille but they could also write it for themselves using a simple stylus to make the dots. For the first time blind and partially sighted people began to be truly independent and to take control of their own lives.
• Louis Braille eventually became a teacher in the school where he had been a student. He was admired and respected by his pupils but, unfortunately, he did not live to see his system widely adopted. He had always been plagued by ill health and in 1852, at the age of.43, he died from tuberculosis.
• In France itself, Louis Braille‘s achievement was finally recognised by the state. In 1952, on the 100^th anniversary of his death, the French Government honoured his memory by moving his remains to the Pantheon in Paris, the resting place of all great French heroes.
• Louis Braille‘s system has remained almost unchanged during the last about 150 years, despite the onset of various technologies, bearing testimony to his farsightedness and ingenuity. Louis Braille paved the way to knowledge and empowerment for millions of blind persons throughout the world.
• Braille, which is a script and not a language for the visually impaired, as is erroneously stated at times consists of six embossed dots placed in two vertical rows. It can be used for any language in the world and is written with the help of a pointed object known as ‘stylus‘. These days, technological devices and softwares are also available for writing Braille and producing books in that system.
• On his 200^th Birth Anniversary, the visually impaired and all their sighted well-wishers salute this great international personality, who belongs not just to one country or continent, but the entire world and all languages.
• Text : As per the material provided by the proponent.

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Issued by India

Issued on Sep 28, 1995

Design : The stamp depicts Louis Pasteur at work originally depicted by Edelfelt (a Finnish painter) recreated in a charcoal sketch. The first day cover is a bronze statue of young Jupille, vaccinated against rabies by Pasteur. The statue by Truffaut stands in the Institut Pasteur, Paris.

Courtesy : Institut Pasteur, Paris, France for all materials of stamp, FDC and Write up.
Charcoal sketch : Sankha Samantha
Cancellation : Alka Sharma

Type : Stamp, Postal Used

Colour : Two Colour

Denomination : 500 Paise

Overall size : 3.91 x 2.90 cms.

Printing size : 3.91 x 2.90 cms.

Perforation : 13 x 13

Paper : Imported un w/m Adhesive Gravure Coated Stamp Paper in sheets of size 53.5 x 50.8 cms.

Numbers of stamps Printed : 0.6 Million

Number per issue sheet : 35

Printing Process : Photogravure

Printer : India Security Press, Nasik

Name : Louis Pasteur

Born on Dec 27, 1822 at Dole, France

Died on Sep 28, 1895 at Marnes–la–Coquette, France

About : 

• Over the course of 50 years Louis Pasteur’s discoveries revolutionised chemistry, agriculture, industry, medicine, surgery and hygiene. These discoveries also greatly changed the human condition, and his brilliance and rigorous methods advanced both science and its techniques. In the work of Pasteur, each discovery is a link in an uninterrupted chain, from molecular asymmetry to the prevention of rabies via fermentation, silkworm, wine and beer diseases, sterilization and virus/vaccines.
• In 1847 he formulated a fundamental law: asymmetry differentiates the organic world from the mineral world; in other words, molecular asymmetry is the mark of life. His work became the basis of a new science – stereochemistry (or three-dimensional chemistry).
• In studying fermentation, he demonstrated that each sort of fermentation is linked to the existence of a specific micro-organism, cultivating it in an appropriate, sterile medium. This is the basis of microbiology.
• Pasteur negated the doctrine of spontaneous generation; he also developed a theory on germs. At the same time, his discovery of anaerobic life paved the way for the study of germs of septicaemia and gangrene among other infections. Thanks to Pasteur, it became possible to devise techniques to kill microbes and to control contamination. Pasteur demonstrated that wine diseases are caused by microorganisms which could be killed by heating the wine to 55°C. Applied to beer and milk, this process called “Pasteurization” soon came into worldwide use.
• Pasteur’s study of silkworm diseases led to the discovery of the infectious agents and revealed transmission of these diseases and how to prevent them, an elaboration on his study of fermentation. He was able to confirm that each disease has its microbe and that the microbes are foreign elements. He established the basic rules of sterilization (asepsis) which became critical for surgery and obstetrics.
• From 1877 to 1887, Pasteur employed these bases of microbiology in the battle against infectious diseases. He went on to discover successively staphylococcus, streptococcus and pneumococcus.
• He discovered the method for the attenuation of virulent micro-organisms and then developed vaccines against chicken pox, cholera, anthrax and swine erysipelas. On July 6, 1885, for the first time, he tested his pioneering rabies treatment on man; the young Joseph Meister was saved.
• On March 1, 1886 Pasteur presented his result to the Academy of Sciences and called for the creation of a rabies vaccine centre. A huge international public drive for funds financed the construction of the Institut Pasteur. In accordance with Pasteur’s wishes, the Institute was founded as a clinic for rabies treatment, a research centre for infectious disease and a teaching institution, Louis Pasteur was then 66 years old. He went on to dedicate the last 7 years of his life to the Institute. His work was pursued and amplified by his disciples, The Pasteuriens.
• Pasteur’s work is not simply the sum of his discoveries. It is also the revolution of scientific methodology. Pasteur had superimposed two indisputable rules of modern research; the freedom of creative imagination obligatorily subjected to rigorous experimentation. Louis Pasteur was also a humanist, his goal always being the amelioration of the human condition. He was a free man who never hesitated to take issue with the prevailing yet false ideas of his time.

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Issued by India

Issued on Oct 21, 1979

Issued for : The Posts and Telegraphs Department feels privileged in honouring Thomas Alva Edison by issuing a special postage stamp commemorating the invention of electric light bulb by him one hundred years ago.

Type : Stamp, Mint Condition

Colour : Red purple

Denomination : 100 Paise

Overall size : 3.91 X 2.90 cms.

Printing size : 3.55 X 2.54 cms.

Perforation : 13 X 13

Watermark : Printed on unwatermarked adhesive stamp paper

Number printed : 20,00,000

Number per issue sheet : 35

Printing process : Photogravure

Designed and printed at : India Security Press

Name : Thomas Alva Edison

Born on Feb 11, 1847 at Milan, Ohio, United States

Died on Oct 18, 1931 at West Orange, New Jersey, United States

About : 

• Thomas Alva Edison, U.S. inventor, best known for his development of the phonograph and the incandescent lamp, was even more notable for the wide range of his interests.
• He was born in Milan, Ohio, on February 11, 1847. He was experimenting for some time with what he called “electric lamp for giving light by incandescence“. On October 21, 1879, in his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, after spending more than $40000 in fruitless experiments, he finally succeeded in making an incandescent lamp in which a loop of carbonized cotton thread glowed in a vacuum glass bulb for more than 40 hours. He himself described the event as “the sight we had so long desired to see met our eyes“. The following decade was devoted to the invention and exploitation and methods for the generation and distribution of electricity, including the three-wire system.
• In his life time of 84 years (he died in 1931), he patented over 1030 inventions which changed our way of living. In 1883 he patented what became known as the “Edison effect“, the passage of electricity from a filament to a plate of metal inside an incandescent lamp globe (a forerunner of the electron tube).
• His invention of the electric bulb, in a way, revolutionalized the technical and social development of mankind. This small ubiquitous device which is so familiar today, is really a gift to the humanity by this great scientist, who worked hard to continuously improve its performance ever since its invention.
• In the course of years, the method of production of electric bulb has developed from manual techniques to a completely mechanical activity in order to cater to the ever increasing demand all over the world, and, as a result of it, a new great break-through was achieved in incandescent lamp technology with the halogen lamp having a luminous efficacy of 20 to 30 lumens per watt.
• In an indirect way, the incandescent lamp has been the motive power behind all further development in the industrial and domestic use of electricity. The fact that radio valves were derived originally from the incandescent lamp, confirms the origin of electronics and its later development as well. The electric lamp, without doubt, has brought ‘Light for everybody‘ and is still doing so!

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Issued by India

Issued on Dec 23, 1978

Issued for : The Posts and Telegraphs Department feels privileged to issue a commemorative stamp on the 75^th year of First Powered Flight.

Design : The stamp depicts Wright Brothers with their aeroplane. The design is based on photographs by courtesy of International Communication Agency, New Delhi.

Type : Stamp, Postal Used

Colour : Buff and Bright Purple

Denomination : 100 Paise

Overall size : 3.91 X 2.90 cms.

Printing size : 3.55 X 2.54 cms.

Perforation : 13 X 13

Watermark : A. P. watermark

Number printed : 20,00,000

Number per issue sheet : 35

Printing process : Photogravure

Designed and printed at : India Security Press

About : 

• On a cold and windy day 75 years ago, one of man’s oldest and boldest dreams – to be able to fly like a bird – became a reality.
• On December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright flew their heavier-than-air flying machine from a desolate spit of land jutting out in the Atlantic Ocean, a place called Kitty Hawk, in North Carolina. The dream of centuries was realized when their flimsy plane, made of silk and wood, with Orville at the controls rose from the sandy ground and was airborne. The flight lasted exactly 12 seconds.
• This was the first time that a machine carrying a man raised itself by its own power into the air in full flight and sailed forward without reduction in speed.
• That day the two brothers flew their plane three more times, alternating piloting the flights. On that notable day, Wilbur had the fourth turn and made the longest distance. He flew for 59 seconds and covered 852 feet.
• In 1904 the Wright brothers rebuilt their machine with modifications and 105 landings were made. In 1905 they concentrated on improvements and refinements, not on radical changes. By 1907 the new Wright engine gave 50 per cent more power than the 1905 engine; its power was sufficient to carry two men, fuel, and a load of 100 pounds. The brothers continued to make and fly planes for many years and Wilbur established a world record for flight in September 1908 in France when he flew 52 miles and remained aloft one hour, 31 minutes and 25 seconds.
• The Wright brothers were two of five children of a bishop. The other three attended college while Wilbur (born 1867) and Orville (born 1871) preferred to tinker with bicycles and printing presses. It was not long before they were interested in the study of flying.
• And their success was not achieved overnight or by chance, nor was it a surprise to those few who knew of their careful preparation. In their work they had been helped beyond measure by the prior efforts of hundreds of other men. For example, the theory of aeronautics was an old one by 1896 when the Wright brothers first began to study it.
• In 1912, just as the airplane was beginning to make great advances, Wilbur died of typhoid. Orville worked on alone, and in 1913 won the Collier Trophy for a device to balance airplanes automatically. He died in 1948.

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Issued by Sweden

Issued on Oct 9, 1976

Issued for : Swedish Inventors and their Technological Inventions

Picture : Several Swedish Inventors and their Technological Inventions. 1.30k – John Ericsson (1803-1889), ship propeller and “Monitor”, 1.30k – Helge Palmcrantz (1842-80) & reaper, 1.30k – Lars Magnus Ericsson (1846-1926) & switchboard, 1.30k – Sven Wingquist (1876-1953) & ball bearing & 1.30k – Gustaf de Laval (1845-1913) & milk separator.

Colour : Multicoloured

Type : Stamps, Postal Used

Watermark : No

Denomination : 1.30 krona each

Perforation : 12½ Horizontal

Printing Process : Engraved

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Issued by India

Issued on Mar 10, 1976

Issued for : The Indian P&T Department deems it a great privilege to bring out a commemorative stamp in honour of this great man whose epoch-making invention has revolutionised the world of communications.

Type : Stamp, Mint Condition

Colour : Black and Yellow

Denomination : 25 Paise

Overall size : 3.91 X 2.90 cms.

Printing size : 3.56 X 2.54 cms.

Perforation : 13 x 13

Watermark : Unwatermarked Paper

Number printed : 30,00,000

Number per issue sheet : 35

Printing process : Photogravure

Designed and printed at : India Security Press

Name : Alexander Graham Bell

Born on Mar 3, 1847 at Edinburgh, Scotland

Died on Aug 2, 1922 at Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, Canada

About : 

• Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the Telephone, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 3, 1847. He was educated at Edinburgh and London Universities. Son and grandson of teachers of speech, Graham Bell was from his childhood fascinated by experiments in speech conducted by his grandfather and the lessons which his father gave. Because of ill health, he moved with his father to Canada in 1870. In 1872 Graham Bell opened a School in Boston for training teachers of the deaf and also gave instructions in the mechanics of speech. The following year he became Professor of Vocal Physiology in Boston University.
• While working to devise a Multiple Telegraph, the thought of reproducing speech over distances constantly stirred his mind. On June 2, 1875, while working in Boston on Multiple Telegraph apparatus, Bell heard over an electric wire a sound corresponding to the twang of a steel spring at the other end. Recognising this as a manifestation of the undulatory current principle, he gave his assistant Thomas A. Watson, instructions for embodying it in a model of a telephone. This apparatus transmitted speech sounds the next day, June 3. Further experiments produced an instrument which on March 10, 1876, transmitted the first complete sentence: “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you“. This was the beginning of the telephone, the day of its invention.
• The telephone was first shown publicly at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. There the telephone attracted attention amidst its formidable rivals such as the first electric light and the first printed telegraph. Bell went to England and further perfected the two-piece device into a single instrument containing the transmitter and the receiver. Incredibly, the London Times described it as an American humbug. All the same, the first telephone exchange in England was established in London in September, 1876.
• Bell and Watson lived to inaugurate the first transcontinental telephone between Washington and San Francisco in 1915. Bell was the founder of the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf and of the Volta Bureau for increasing knowledge relating to deafness. He was for a time President of the National Geographic Society and was appointed a Regent of the Smithsonian Institution in 1898.
• The great pioneer and inventor died on August 2, 1922 at his summer home near Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada. A fitting tribute was paid to him when all the telephone stations on the Bell Telephone network in U.S.A. and Canada remained silent for one minute on the day of the funeral.

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Issued by India

Issued on Dec 12, 1974

Issued for : The Indian P & T Department deems it a great privilege to bring out a commemorative stamp in honour of this great Italian scientist whose epoch-making invention has revolutionised the world of communications.

Description of Design : The design of the stamp is vertical and depicts the portrait of Marconi.

Type : Stamp, Postal Used

Colour : Grey

Denomination : Rs.2

Overall Size : 3.91 X 2.90 cms.

Printing Size : 3.56 X 2.54 cms.

Perforation : 13 x 13

Watermark : Unwatermarked paper

Number Printed : 20,00,000

Number per issue sheet : 35

Printing Process : Photogravure

Designed and Printed at : India Security Press

Name : Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi

Born on Apr 25, 1874 at Palazzo Marescalchi, Bologna, Italy

Died on Jul 20, 1937 at Rome, Italy

About : 

• Guglielmo Marconi was born in the Italian town of Bologna on April 25, 1874. He had his early schooling in Bologna and Florence. Later he went to the technical school of Leghorn, where he studied Physics under Vincenzo Rosa and had the opportunity of investigating electromagnetic (or Hertzian) waves, following the earlier mathematical work of Maxwell and the experimental work of Hertz, Lodge and others.
• After conceiving the idea of using electro-magnetic waves for telegraphy, he carried out various experiments and finally in 1895 succeeded in transmitting signals over a distance of a few metres. Later, he was able to transmit Morse signals over distances of more than three kilo-metres. The following year he went to England to file his first patent in Wireless Telegraphy. A letter of introduction to William Preece, Engineer-in-Chief of the General Post Office, led to a series of demonstrations culminating in 1897 in a record transmission across 14 Kms. of the Bristol Channel.
• By the end of the century wireless communication had been adopted by the British and Italian Navies. Its value as a life saver was also quickly recognised by the merchant navy. Thanks to wireless, a number of lives were saved during the “Titanic” disaster in 1912.
• The year 1901 was a landmark in Marconi‘s life. Apart from the establishment of a wireless school (today’s Marconi College) and communicating over a distance of 319 Kms. between Isle of Wight and Lizard, he succeeded in his famous trans-Atlantic experiments conducted with the assistance of such noted persons as Dr. Fleming (inventor of the radio valve), George Kemp, P.W. Paget and others. He was able to receive signals sent from Poldhu Cornwall, across the Atlantic Ocean at St. John’s, New Foundland.
• Wireless soon became popular and was adapted to aeroplanes during the First World War. A further stride in wireless communications was made in 1919, when a Marconi engineer made the first east to west transatlantic telephony transmission, and the concept of broadcasting took shape at Marconi‘s Works in Chelmsford. In 1922, the British Broadcasting Company (which later became the British Broadcasting Corporation) was formed by Marconi‘s Works and five other manufacturers. In 1924, the British Government awarded a contract to Marconi for the formation of a wireless telecommunication network connecting countries in the British Empire, using shortwave directional transmission developed by him.
• In 1929, Marconi returned to Italy because of ill-health, but continued his work, as a result of which he installed the first microwave telephone link in 1932 and also demonstrated the principles of Radar in 1935. The Marconi EMI Ltd., in England had, in the meantime, introduced the world’s first high definition television service.
• The Nobel Prize for Physics awarded to Marconi in 1909 was one of the many honours he received during his life time. After the First World War during which he served in the Italian Army, he did intensive diplomatic work as a plenipotentiary delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. The great pioneer and inventor died in Rome on July 20, 1937. A fitting tribute was paid to him when wireless transmission all over the world was stopped for two minutes.

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Issued by France

Issued on Feb 4, 1967 (Emile Zola & Beaumarchais), Jun 24, 1967 (St. Francois de Sales & Albert Camus)

Issued for : Great Philosophers of France

Picture : Different French Personalities : Emile Zola, Beaumarchais [pen name of Pierre Augustin Caron], St. Francois de Sales (1567-1622), Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Colour : Emile Zola – Slate Blue & Blue, Beaumarchais – Rose Brown & Lilac, Francois de Sales – Dull Violet & Purple, Albert Camus – Brown & Dull Claret

Type : Semi–Postal Stamps, Postal Used

Watermark : No

Denomination : 30 + 10 Centimes each [The surtax was for the Red Cross]

Perforation : 13

Printing Process : Engraved

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