Penny Black Black design features in the innovations section of the new British passport in 2015. Also in 2015, the search engine Google marked the 175th anniversary of the postage stamp with a Google doodle of the Penny Black. Penny Black The Penny Black was the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. It was first issued in Great Britain on 1 May 1840, but was not valid for use until 6 May. It features a profile of Queen Victoria. In 1837, British postal rates were high, complex and anomalous. To simplify matters, Sir Rowland Hill proposed an
Penny (unit) nail, the higher the cost per long hundred. The system remained in use in England into the 20th century, but is obsolete there today. The d is an abbreviation for "denarius", a Roman coin similar to a penny; this was the abbreviation for the monetary penny in the United Kingdom before decimalisation. Penny (unit) In the United States, the length of a nail is designated by its penny size, written with a number and the abbreviation d for penny; for example, "10d" for a ten-penny nail. A larger number indicates a longer nail, shown in the table below. Nails under