Postal flame

A postal flame , or mechanical obliteration, is a Oblitération which include/understand, in addition to the seal giving the place and the date of assumption of responsibility of the fold by the postal services, an illustration or a text generally registered in a rectangle. The postal flames are the subject of collection by the philatelists. These flames can have various goals: commercial, tourist, teaching, etc

History

The first flames of Oblitération appear in the last decades of the 19th century. Their creation is related to the mechanization of obliteration: if the machine always affixes the seal at the same place (generally, in top on the right of the envelope), a stuck stamp too on the left or a whole of several stamps can not be obliterated. These long flames mackle ink more a large surface of the envelope.

As from the years 1870 with the the United Kingdom, the volume of the unceasingly increasing mail, of the faster means of obliterations were created: thus appeared machines to obliterate, comprising rollers of impression under which pass the folds to obliterate. The marks affixed by these machines take the form of parallel bars of cancellation, undulated, lengthened, dotted associated with seals on date. The first tests of these machines, were Hoster followed of very near by Ethridge, Hey Dolphin, Bickerdike, Boston, Colombia, Krags, Universal, etc

Slogans of propaganda, then illustrations appear later. Certain postal administrations profited to sell these illustrations like ad space.

Various types of flames

Flames emitted by the postal administrations

To make pass from publicity for their own services or to transmit a message on the mail, the postal administrations used the postal flames. For example, in France, in the Years 1970, obliterations carried flames announcing the implementation of the zip code to five digits.

Commercial flames

These flames are of two kinds:

is paid at the postal services, a company rents the space of obliteration to make an advertizing display.
is while being used of the machines to obliterate that the company rents at the postal service, the company announces on its mail its logo and its address.

Tourist flames

The cities and communes require of the post offices of their territory to add to obliteration an image summarizing the commune, with an aim of making known it with the recipients.

For example, the folds posted in the town of Béziers are obliterated of a sight of the city with the high city and the bridge. The folds posted in the sorting office of Montpellier a long time carried a promotion of the Grotte of Clamouse located at the North-West of the city héraultaise.

Collection

There is debate between the collectors of postal flames to know how to preserve these postal marks. Two positions dominate:

to preserve the whole envelope, which poses the problem of the volume occupied by such a collection;
to preserve the fragment of envelope on which the stamp and the flame rest, which certain collectors estimate to be a loss in value.

The postal flames are obtained by recovering obliterated mail. It is possible to send an envelope stamped to a post office so that it there is posted and receives the flame of this office. The philatelist preparing itself his envelopes can try to coordinate the subject of the stamp, the flame and perhaps of a Postcard in order to carry out a chart-maximum.

Specificities by country

France

The first machines to be obliterated appeared in France the day before the World Fair of 1900 in the shape of a flag, i.e. a “flame”. The office of the Street of the Louvre which inaugurates this Bickerdyle machine for the period of the wishes of 1898-1899.

An American flame flag also functioned in Paris, in the small post office opened by the United States during the exposure of 1900.

These flame-flags survive in the shape of anonymous corrugated lines. In the years 1920, the re-use of the machines Daguin allows the development of illustrated flames put at the place of the second stamp on date.

During several decades of the 20th century, rectangular flames existed on the left of the stamp on date. They generally illustrate: a message of postal information (zip code, etc) or social (fight against the diseases, prevention), a tourist promotion of the city of the post office, the promotion of a local demonstration. In 2000, approximately thousand flames were emitted in Metropolitan France.

However, in 2007, La Poste decides to stop the use of the illustrated flames, apart from the corrugated lines. Previously, the mail is obliterated in the office of the sector where it is deposited, and which can have a flame illustrated. If all the mail is not obliterated at the time when passes the truck of the raising device bound for the Sorting office, either this raising device takes delay, or the mail is raised only the following day. La Poste reorganizes this system in the middle of the years 2000: the mail from now on is obliterated in blue in the processing center of the mail, making less relevant one local personalization of the flame.

A new generation of machine of preparation of the mail resulting from letter-boxes started to be deployed as from 2006. Realized by the company Toshiba Corporation in Japan (Kawasaki), they obliterate stampings by the technique of the jet of ink deviated. The material chosen by La Poste is that of the Imaje company based with Valence, in France. The flames containing of graphics cannot be printed by this technique; on the other hand, it is possible to modify the text of the mark of obliteration according to the identified characteristics of each fold. One sees appearing since January 15th, 2007 the mention “letter priority” on the folds from which stamping was recognized with a good probability as correspondent with the tariff “letter”. In addition, the folds coming from franking machines comprises only the date of obliteration.

The flames are prohibited on the announcements of death, following a complaint of a family whose father died the shortly after his arrival in Nice, the flame on these announcements were Nice one comes there for one day one remains there always .

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