Newman, Jerry Seinfeld’s nemesis in his eponymous sitcom, famously (and ominously) said that “When you control the mail, you control information.”
That was something Benjamin Franklin, the Renaissance man and Founding Father, knew very well. He’d overseen the mail service from 1753 until 1774, improving a rough system connecting the 13 British colonies. But, Smithsonian Magazine wrote, when it became clear that war between the Americans and Britain was inevitable, Franklin and his fellow rebels relied on an underground communications network, sharing information that would prove crucial to the revolutionaries’ success.
In 1775, the Continental Congress created what would become the United States Postal Service, with Franklin as its first Postmaster General. It was, the agency’s website says, “the first — and for many citizens, the most consequential — function of the new government.”
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