The Post Office and British Broadcasting
5 November 2009
The British Postal Museum & Archive has a an interesting post on electronic mail historically – The Post Office and British Broadcasting.
Not many people would associate the Post Office with broadcasting, but until 1922 it held a monopoly on electronic mass communication. When telegraphy, and later, the telephone were developed, the Post Office argued that it controlled anything which involved delivery from a sender to a receiver. Telegraph and telephone switching stations were defined as electrical post offices, with the messages or calls regarded as electronic letters.
