The Elevator Legacy - 161 Years Later
For over a hundred years Nations around the world have honoured people, events, and significant moments through commemorative stamps. Unlike other regular postage stamps (known as definitives), commemorative stamps are printed only once and are allowed to go out of circulation as their supply is used up.
Stamps have payed tribute to significant inventors and inventions from the Scottish-Canadian Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone to the Wright brothers' first airplane. On May 18th, 1981 the first of fifteen themed stamps was issued in the United States. It was known as the Transportation Series, and each year for the course of the next 15 years, the unique stamp would picture a different mode of transportation.
March. 23, 1857, Elisha Otis' 1st elevator was installed in a department store at 488 Broadway in New York City. 161 Years later this momentous leap into the vertical landscape was commemorated by a USA Postal Stamp. Designed by Loy Nolan of McLean, Virginia, it was denominated at 5.3cents. The 7th to be issued, the stamp became part of the legendary transportation series as an important invention that enabled communication, exchange, and other forms of movement between people through the built city.
