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 press penny-paying public. These new newspaper readers enjoyed information about police and criminal cases. The main revenue for the penny press was advertising while other newspapers relied heavily on high priced subscriptions to finance their activities. The idea of a penny paper was not new in the 1830s. By 1826, many editors were experimenting with sports news, gossip, and a cheap press. Most newspapers in the early nineteenth century cost six cents and were distributed through subscriptions. On July 24, 1830, the first penny press newspaper came to the market: Lynde M. Walter's Boston "Transcript". Unlike most later penny papers, Walter's