Mail boxes

Mail boxes

The Austrian monarchy started to use mail boxes in 1817 when a decree came out requiring that, starting from the first day of June, at least one mail box be installed at every post office. The fact behind this decree was the duty imposed from the same day on the addressees of domestic letters to pay the postage, which meant that there was no more need to post letters at a post office counter. The original mail boxes were wooden boxes with a slot to insert the letter, located inside post offices and stations.

Mail boxes

Outdoor boxes, installed on the outside of postal stations or offices, soon followed. Mail boxes became widespread after the introduction of stamps (in 1850 in this area) serving as postage. Since then they could be found also at more remote sites. The oldest mail box in the museum's sub-collection dates back to the 1820s; it is a wooden box adapted to the purpose. Following are mail boxes from the first half of the 19th century, designed for both indoor and outdoor installation, in most cases made of wood and less often of iron plates. The shapes and colours vary, although most of them were painted in the Austrian colours (black and yellow), in some cases displaying the symbol of a letter. The most widespread type, made by local craftsmen for local postmasters and postal station administrators, had a lockable hinged lid.

Outdoor boxes, the only ones permitted after 1850, required the use of a weather-resistant material, i.e. coated, and later enamelled iron plates. A standardized type with the same shape, colour and mechanism, available in three different sizes (designed for cities, towns or village communities), started to prevail in the 1870s. Karel Paris, an engineer in the services of the Viennese-based Trade Ministry, came up with an innovated design, which allowed to automatically retrieve mail from massive city mail boxes by means of bags with a special frame.

Mail boxes from the era of interwar Czechoslovakia were blue with a line in red and white and the national emblem. The most common mechanism used to retrieve mail from these mail boxes was the automated retrieval system invented by Krátil or Zemánek. The standard orange colour accompanied by the postal logo replaced the previously used national colours in 1963. Glass-reinforced plastic is the most recent innovation used in the production of mail boxes. Bags used to automatically retrieve mail from some of the boxes are also included in this sub-collection.

  • So-called size II Austrian mail box So-called size II Austrian mail box
  • The oldest type of mail boxes The oldest type of mail boxes
  • Multiple letter box system Multiple letter box system
  • Zemánek mail box Zemánek mail box
  • So-called size II Czechoslovak mail box So-called size II Czechoslovak mail box
  • Mail box used by the Czechoslovak Communications Mail box used by the Czechoslovak Communications