Archives – Philatelic Literature & Research

Resource of the Month – New Issues for a New Year

For those that frequent the American Philatelic Society web page one of the most popular destinations on the website is the page that lists the new U.S. stamp issues. Collectors are eager to find out what the latest issues are and when they are due to be issued. Similarly here in the library, one of the lesser known items that are regularly received and added to the American Philatelic Research Library collection on a daily basis are what are known as New Issues announcements and forms. These often pamphlet-shaped materials are received in the library from numerous worldwide national stamp issuing agencies as a form of announcing their newest issues and providing ordering information.

Resource of the Month – American Bank Note Company Archive Files

At the American Philatelic Research Library (APRL) we are truly fortunate in not only the number but also the type of philatelic literature donations that are received for inclusion into the research collection. One of the truly remarkable donations to the APRL special collections was given by donor Arthur Morowitz in the form of several hundred archival, mostly correspondence, files. Housed on the second floor of the library, partly in the public space in a series of two three-drawer lateral file cabinets and also in the non-public archives area in over eighty archival document boxes resides a significant collection of donated files from the American Bank Note Company Archives.

Inside the APRL Archives: Lytle S. Adams Scrapbook of First Ship-to-Shore Air Mail

This post is the first in a quarterly series highlighting items from the APRL’s archival collections and historical objects. In this series APRL Research Assistant Marian Mills writes about some of the unique and rare items found in the APRL Archives.

Dr. Adams (holding mail bag) on the S.S. Leviathan

In 1929, oral surgeon and part-time inventor Dr. Lytle Adams planned a test flight to demonstrate his latest invention of a device that could pick up mail from a ship by a moving air plane. This first experimental flight from ship-to-shore was planned for the S.S. Leviathan’s trip, which departed from Southampton on June 2, 1929 and arrived in New York on June 7. This first flight was unsuccessful.