STAMP ROLLS
The issue of postage stamps in roll form was a significant step forward in the development of our postal services, providing as it did a labour-saving potential to both the Post Office and to the large number of firms who took advantage of automatic stamp affixing machines.
The idea of stamps in rolls, however, is not a recent one, although the Post Office did not issue them until 1912. In the Treasury Competition of 1839, one of the four prizes of £100 went to the designer of a machine for issuing embossed 1d stamps from a roll of 240. During the latter half of the 19th century, Victorian inventors produced many ideas and designs for coin-operated stamp vending machines, some of which also dispensed paper, envelopes or postcards. 1884 seems to have been the year during which the Post Office officially involved itself in experiments with vending machines, erecting a trial machine at Cannon St Station.
The first decade of the 20th century saw the well-documented formation, by Mrs Kermode and friends, of The British Stamp and Ticket Automatic Delivery Co. Limited, which during this period hired out about a dozen
