# 3061-64 FDC - 1996 32c Pioneers of Communication

US #3061-64
1996 Pioneers of Communication

• First Day Cover
• Commemorates four 19^th century inventors

Category of Stamp:  Commemorative
Set:  Pioneers of Communication
Value:  32¢, First-Class mail rate
First Day of Issue:  February 22, 1996
First Day City:  New York, New York
Printed by:  Ashton-Potter (USA) Ltd.
Printing Method: Lithographed
Format:  Panes of 20 (4 across, 5 down) from plates of 120 (8 across, 15 down)
Perforations:  11.1 X 11

Reason the stamp was issued:  The set of four stamps pays tribute to four communication pioneers whose inventions led the way in mass communications.

About the stamp design:  Fred Otnes was the artist who produced the images for these stamps.  He used photos of the inventors and of the inventions or discoveries they made as inspiration for his designs.  Each stamp also includes the signature of the inventor and a line describing their invention, along with birth and death dates.

First Day City:  The First Day of Issue ceremony was held on the opening day of the Postage Stamp Mega-Event in New York City, New York.

About the Pioneers of Communication set:  Issued as a block of four, these stamps honor the achievements of four communication pioneers. Each stamp combines a portrait of the inventor with an image of his invention: Eadweard Muybridge with a series of photographs taken by his zoopraxiscope; Ottmar Mergenthaler with a linotype machine; Frederic Ives with an enlarged halftone photogravure image; and William Dickson with motion picture images taken from his work with Thomas Edison.

History the stamps represents: 
Photographer Eadweard Muybridge was born in England on April 9, 1830.  He traveled to the US when he was 20 and settle in San Francisco.  By 1867, he was a professional photographer, and his big break came in 1867 when he photographed Yosemite Valley and areas around San Francisco.
Muybridge began experimenting with photographing motion. To capture images of a running horse, Muybridge used a series of 12 to 24 cameras, which were triggered by strings – the horse broke the strings as it ran by, thus taking the horse’s picture at various stages of its stride. His first attempts failed because his camera lacked the fast shutter speeds needed. By 1877, Muybridge had developed a high-speed shutter with an exposure time of 2/1,000 of a second. The experiment worked, and the resulting photographs proved Stanford was right!
To display his pictures, Muybridge invented the zoopraxiscope – a lantern that projected images on a screen in rapid succession from photographs printed on a rotating glass disc. The spinning of the disk gave the pictures the illusion of movement.

Inventor Ottmar Mergenthaler was born on May 11, 1854, in Hatchel, Kingdom of Württemberg (in present-day Germany). Mergenthaler invented the Linotype, a machine which made it quicker and easier to set complete lines of type for printing presses, revolutionizing printing in the 19^th century.

Frederic Eugene Ives was born on February 17, 1856, in Litchfield, Connecticut. He developed the first successful half-tone process and invented the “Kromskop,” which projected three identical images through different colored filters to produce some of the first color photographs.

Inventor William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson was helped invent the Kinetoscope and Mutoscope, early steppingstones in the motion picture industry.