Article: Postcard images reveal the history

Postcard images reveal the history, and tackiness, of 20th- century America

By DENNIS MCCANN

of the Journal Sentinel staff

Sunday, June 4, 2000

Wauconda, Ill. -- Before e-mail there was p-mail.

P for postcard, and p for penny. So cheap and easy to send, postcards burst onto the world scene in 1889 to mark completion of the Eiffel Tower. The post office had sold penny postcards earlier than that, but these were the first commercial cards, so colorful and inventive, and by the 1893 World Expo in Chicago, the craze had become unstoppable.

Stores could advertise on postcards, history could be recorded. Thanks to photo processing paper on postcard stock, any photograph could be made into a penny ...

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