Print

Time and Distance


By Hans Runge Kristoffersen and Sune Christian Pedersen

The mail must be delivered. Fast and on time. Day and Night. So it is today – and so it has been from the first day of postal service. Even the steady demand for efficiency was introduced during the first century of postal service.


The time pressure on employees of the postal service is mentioned as early as 1623 in a draft for the ordinance that founded the postal service the year after. The draft stipulated among other things that the postmen should make certain journeys every day, winter and summer, "and if the day is insufficient, the night shall be used". The country towns and the peasants would similarly be obliged to expedite the postmen day and night.

In the first ordinance of the postal service in 1624 it was determined that the journey from Copenhagen to Hamburg should take 8 days. The journey took place in open carriages which the postman himselfhad to hire in the towns he reached. In the 1640’s the travelling time was reduced to 4 days, and in 1653 when the postal service was transferred to the Hamburg merchant Paul Klingenberg the trip to Hamburg had to be managed "in less than 3 days’ time". And at the end of the century the demand was 51 hours. A minimum speed had even been calculated: "Whether the roads are bad or good, every mile [about 7 km] in three quarters of an hour", i.e. about 7-9 km/h. In the post offices and at the shifting stations on the way the postman and the postmaster were allowed maximum 15 minutes to redistribute the mail before the rider had to be back in the saddle.

Surveying of Roads
Such strict demands required precise mapping of the road sections of the route, and great efforts were made in this field in the 1690’s. The world-famous Danish scientist, Ole Rømer, instituted a precise surveying of the main roads of the country by means of a special mileage cart. The post planners now had a more exact basis of drawing up routes and rules of times of arrival, and the postmen could use the mile stones that were erected along the road indicating quarter, half and whole miles. The surveying was not the first of its kind in the country. Both under Frederik II and Christian IV mileage cart surveying had been carried out and mile stones erected along the important king’s roads, but Rømer undertook the first nationwide surveying of the roads by which the mail was transported.

"When traveling from Korsør we found it very convenient at every quarter of a mile to see new mile stones on the highway, that is to say a round heap of stones, about twice the length of a man in diameter and 12 feet tall, from the upper centre of which a stone projected", German doctor J.D. Major wrote in his account of a journey in 1693.

In the 1690’s cartographer Jens Sørensen created some very precise topographic maps and charts, but it is uncertain whether these military secrets were ever made accessible to the people of the postal service. They probably had to get the general view of the country from cartographer Johannes Mejer’s map of Denmark from 1650.

Control of Speed
In 1683 Klingenberg was ordered to see to it that post riders would change horses at every two miles. And that this was a serious matter appears from the fact that postmaster Bolt in Odense was threatened with a fine of 20 rix-dollars for each time he let a rider skip the shift – in comparison Bolt’s annual salary was merely 80 rix-dollars. Fresh horses were a necessity if the high speed should be maintained.

So were reliable riders. In 1667, anyone who had to do with the conveyance of mail was prescribed under the threat of punishment to keep a register of the times of arrival and departure of the mail. Printed forms were to be filled in with times of arrival as the mail eventually reached its destinations. If delays were too big, there would be a fine for the postmaster (who would then in turn forward the fine to the postman).

The Time Issue
It was, however, not as simple as it may seem to establish how big the delays really were. The problem was that the country was not synchronized. It was rather difficult to know for sure what the time was in the neighbouring town at a certain hour.

Clocks were unreliable and the sun the most certain to set your watch by. Consequently, Christian V emitted an ordinance in 1696 "as we have learned that the timepieces (tower clocks) in some of the towns in our kingdom of Denmark, through which the mounted post are passing, are said to go very unevenly and incorrectly due to as well negligence of the sacristans as inefficiency of the timepieces, by which the postman in his hours shall not be confused". The towns should therefore have their unpunctual clockworks repaired immediately.

So the unpunctual clockworks might be a convenient excuse for delayed postmen and their postmasters. In 1753, when the postmaster in Assens had to explain the many delays on the route Nyborg-Odense-Assens, he emphasized the clock in Assens which was known to go too fast. To this the General Postal District replied that "it was indeed strange" that the clock was always wrong when the post rider arrived in town, "but correct when he was leaving".

In the 1790’s the problem was solved by providing the postriders with special watches which made it possible for the postmasters who received the postmen to estimate their time consumption on basis of watches set at the time of departure.


Print

All rights reserved. No part of this website may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or ortherwise, whitout the prior written permission of the publisher.