(Image credit: (The Smithsonian National Postal Museum via Flickr)But in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the national mail service was the country's beating heart of innovation.)
(Image credit: An early airmail plane parked next to a U.S. mail truck.)
(Image credit: The Village Tavern, by John Lewis Krimmel, depicts the tavern as mail hub, with a mail carrier (left) walking through the door and a desk for writing in the corner.)
(Image credit: City letter carriers with handcarts used to collect and transport mail.)
(Image credit: A row of one-man mail wagons used to collect mail from city mailboxes.)
(Image credit: Workers at a New York City post office load cannisters of mail into pneumatic tubes.)
(Image credit: Dog sleds transporting mail in Alaska.)
(Image credit: A mail motorcycle in Washington, D.C.)
(Image credit: New York City Postmaster Thomas G. Patten hands Lt. Torrey Webb a bag of letters for one of the first regularly scheduled airmail flights in the U.S.)
(Image credit: Clerks sort mail inside the tight quarters of a Railway Post Office car.)
(Image credit: The first Highway Post Office bus in Strasburg, Virginia.)
(Image credit: A U.S. Navy Regulus I missile, containing mail, is fired from the USS Barbero for the first, and last, official missile mail experiment.)
(Image credit: The "mailster.")
(Image credit: A carrier delivering mail in a right-hand drive van, similar to the ones seen on the road today.)
