The British £1 stamp for the 1929 Postal Union Conference, designed by Harold Nelson.
The Postal Union Congress is the main international meeting of the Universal Postal Union, used to discuss various issues affecting international postal services, such as legislation, the political climate, and other strategic issues. The first congress was held in Bern, Switzerland in 1874, and was attended by delegates from 22 countries, most of them European. The meetings are normally held every four years, although they were cancelled during the two World Wars. Extraordinary Meetings can also be called outside the four-year cycle.
Delegates are usually presented with special albums of stamps by the other participating countries, to cover the period since the previous congress.
^The international parcel service, which allowed the orderly shipment of mailed packages and parcels from one country to another according to predetermined rates, was established by the Universal Postal Union on 1 October 1881 (Great Britain, India, The Netherlands and Persia, 1 April 1882), following the agreement of 9 October 1880 in Paris. The service was difficult to introduce as in several countries the carriage of parcels was a monopoly of the railway companies, and Egypt, Great Britain, India, Canada and Italy all initially claimed that there was no parcel service in their country. Source: "The Universal Postal Union: Its History and Progress. A paper read before the Leeds Philatelic Society by E. Egly, President, on December 19th, 1905." in The London Philatelist, Vol. XV, No. 169, January 1906, pp. 2-11.