This was published 2 years ago
What is an aerogramme? Why there's no replacing the original 'air letter'
By Lee Tulloch
The aerogramme and postcard were superbly efficient tools of communication.Credit: Ekaterina Chuyko
"Remember aerogrammes?"
I was at a dinner party this week and the guests were reminiscing about past travel adventures. One guest had found a whole stash of letters he'd sent to a parent on some of his first overseas trips.
The letters expressed thoughts and sentiments that surprised him and told stories he'd long forgotten. It was like stumbling across a portal into his young self.
Most of these were written on aerogrammes. For those who don't know, an aerogramme is a piece of ultra-lightweight writing paper with glued edges that can be written on and then folded and sealed to form an envelope. Often, they have stamped postage affixed. Weighing less than five grams, they were popular in times when larger and heavier envelopes attracted what were considered expensive postage fees.
The aerogramme was invented in 1933 by British General Douglas Gumbley, who was director-general of Posts and Telegraphs and Civil Aviation in Mesopotamia (Iraq). The UK stopped issuing aerogrammes in 2012 but you can still buy and send the cultural artefact at Australia Post.
The long letter (or even the thank you note) has effectively disappeared since the advent of speedier email. And, to an extent, that's also due to the super-cheap phone call or the free international call via What's App, Skype and a multitude other resources.
When I lived in New York in the late '80s, international phone calls, certainly to Australia, were prohibitively expensive. We couldn't afford to call home, except at Christmas. We wrote letters, perhaps not as often as we should. Our parents couldn't follow our exploits on Instagram or check in on Zoom or even send a quick text to make sure we were all right.
Now that we have so many sophisticated devices at our fingertips, it's hard to imagine how we got by. There were weeks when we wouldn't know what was happening at home. If there was an emergency, we knew we would be contacted. But otherwise, we had to wait for the letter to arrive.
The advent of the Fax (remember those?) later in the 1980s helped a little, but they were big, clunky machines and not at all universally used. Compared to the size of a smartphone they seem very quaint these days.
Thinking about the aerogramme and postcard now, they are such superbly efficient tools of communication. There is very little waste. They take up miniscule space and weight when freighted. They're the communications equivalent of string bags – cheap, simple and eco-friendly.
Even so, I'm not writing an aerogramme anytime soon. My writing has become impossible to read, for a start. And, like most of us, I'm a fully paid-up member of the smartphone set. Not by choice, but because it's impossible to avoid having one. They've gone from faddish status symbols to indispensable items.
My current phone is something of an engineering miracle. It has a 128G capacity, wide and ultra-wide cameras and can make films of cinematic quality. I can record interviews, watch TV, play music, video call my family, count the steps I walk, read a book, play word games, research restaurants, translate foreign languages or learn them, track flight changes, pay for purchases, book a hotel, annotate my expenses, follow a route via GPS and work out why my plant is dying.
It also costs upwards of $1200. It depletes the world's resources of minerals such as gold, cobalt and lithium. It generates toxic waste and is difficult to recycle. An estimated 3.5 billion people use smartphones and a huge majority get a new phone every two years, generating more greenhouse gasses than any other consumer electric appliance.
But the little machines are wonders. They've made certain aspects of travel and communication so much easier. And now we simply can't do without them, even if we wanted to.
The resurgence of QR codes as check-ins and proof of vaccination has consolidated our dependence. On top of this, battery life has become more important. If you're travelling and unable to recharge frequently, you need a phone capable of carrying a charge for 24 hours. I had to upgrade to a new phone before I went to France in December because I was worried my battery would die with all the multiple check-ins and outs.
I do think the aerogramme, with its pale blue papers and red and blue striped borders, is an invention to challenge the most sophisticated smartphone. It lasted for over 100 years. Our phones won't.
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