James Chalmers
- Name : Chalmers
- Born : 1782
- Died : 1853
- Category : Inventors
- Finest Moment : Showing his stamps, 1834
The simplest ideas are often the best. Think of cats' eyes in the road for example. Or, even better, postage stamps. That's what James Chalmers, an Arbroath man, came up with in 1834.
He was a printer and publisher, producing, amongst other publications, the Dundee Chronicle. Interested, as all printers are obliged to be, in things postal, he thought that a nationwide, standard postal charge could be introduced. As a necessary precursor to this, he realised that adhesive postage stamps would be useful, and accordingly in 1834 designed and printed examples of these adhesive postage stamps for public exhibition. This was some six years before the better known Penny Post of Rowland Hill.