New York Edison Alphabet Poster Stamps
An alphabet is an old reliable concept for presenting a topic in an entertaining way (as my web site itself attests!), and has been used on poster stamps, of course. The set below, distributed by New York Edison in 1913 to promote electricity, is quaint and charming today, when we are exhorted to use LESS, not more, and electrical conveniences are so much taken for granted that it is hard to imagine a time when they were a novelty, and people had to be persuaded to try them.
As you can see, there are four frame colors: blue, green, pink, and lavender. I own 51 if the 104 combinations, and was able to fill in a few more from scans other collectors have sent me.
The distinction between the pink and lavender is sometimes difficult in these scans, though first-hand it is unambiguous. If you would like to contribute any of the missing scans, I prefer 300 dpi. Don't worry about straightening or cropping, I can do that.
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One question that always comes to mind for me when I encounter sets like this is How were they printed? Was each letter printed separately, or all letters on one sheet? We have a partial answer to that question in the strip of three below, contributed by viewer R Roberts.
So it is possible that all 26 stamps were printed as a single sheet. I would love to know how it looked, as there is no likely multiple that equals 26, so there must have been duplicates of some stamps, or other labels to fill out something like 5x6.
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Created -- 02/23/2008
Revised -- 02/23/2008