Postage stamps and postal history of the United States a precondition for their issue by a nation was the establishment of standardized rates for delivery throughout the country. If postal fees were to remain (as they were in many lands) a patchwork of many different jurisdictional rates, the use of stamps would only produce limited gains in efficiency, for postal clerks would still have to spend time calculating the rates on many letters: only then would senders know how much postage to put on them. The introduction of postage stamps in the UK in May 1840 was received with great interest in the United States (and around the world).
Naked Maja (postage stamps) of "La maja vestida" would have preserved all symbolism of the issue, though such choice would have been less scandalous. The Spanish governmental mail service, however, went all in. Despite the fact that postage stamps are officially a 'business card' of the issuing country, one of its official media symbols, and therefore sexual motives in their design are traditionally rare (and this is especially true for the first half of the 20th century), depicting naked flesh (both female and male) on postage stamps of that time was, strictly speaking, no news. Images of ancient statues or their imitations were quite