First and Last Service Period
Austria gained permission in 1721 from the Ottoman Empire to operate a postal service for official correspondence only and subsequently this was extended to the opening of post offices and carrying mail for merchants. This resulted in 1748 with the establishment of a post office in Galata outside of Istanbul, and eventually extended to 65 locations throughout the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean. The oldest known cancellation is a double linear "CONSTAN-TINOPEL" in 1787. The latest remaining Austrian post offices in Turkey area were closed on 30 September 1914.
Read more about this topic: Austrian Post Offices In The Ottoman Empire
Famous quotes containing the words service and/or period:
“Our chief want in life, is, someone who shall make us do what we can. This is the service of a friend. With him we are easily great.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)