In 1865, Dr. Stephan, a Prussian State Councillor, sent a "memory card" about the conference he was attending to Karlsruhe. A memory card was a note card that was to be carried in the open, without an envelope. This idea was not immediately accepted. Professor Emmanuel Hermann lobbied and convinced Austria to accept this form of letter, calling it a "correspondence card" in 1869.

In France, the postcard made its first appearance in 1870, Strasbourg. During the siege of Paris, the post office created "postcards" as a means of sending an "open card" with the recipient's address on one side and the message on the other. The first accepted official postcard was 1872.

Early French Postcard

In 1873 two type of postcards were sold. One was yellow with 10 centimen postage. It was circulated in France and Algeria, but only used for inter-office messaging. The other had 15 centimen postage and it could travel from office to office. The only illustration for this official postcard was a 4mm thick frame, reserved for the recipient's address and postage stamp. The public made this postcard welcomed, passing seven million postcards in the first week. Four other official postcards were born in 1873, two in 1874 and two more in 1875.

Postcards remained a monopoly of the post office until 1875, even though industrialists began to produce advertising on the backs of cards as early as 1873. The Belle Jardiniere, a department store, reproduced illustrations of their buildings with maps on the back of the cards for advertising. A decree was issued in 1875 allowing illustrations BUT only on the backs.

In 1889, designer Léon-Charles Libon, launched illustrations of the Eiffel Tower for the Expo World Exhibition. Five different versions were sold in 1889. As mementos of their visit, tourists could have their cards stamped stating their level of ascent in the Eiffel Tower. This was a huge success, selling over 300,000 copies.

The first tourist area to be marketed in photographic style was the Marseille Dominique Piazza, 1891. Quickly other cities in France followed suit including Paris, However, early postcards are extremely rare before 1897. An invention of the 1860's called the collotype was used heavily by 1898, allowing industrial production with no loss in quality of the image and making the production inexpensive. Thousands of publishers entered the postcard printing business.

Illustrated Postcard

In 1898, Neurdein and Albert Bergeret printed images for each major city in France. The Universal Exposition of Paris in 1900 saw a tremendous amount of growth in the postcard industry, beginning the "golden era" of the postcard.

In 1903, photographic images began to appear on the front of the postcard. However, the card was divided into two parts, one on the right had the address and the one on the left allowed the photographic image. By 1904, the entire photograph is allowed on one side and the address on the flip side. This change was called photo cards and remained popular throughout the golden age of postcards.

A decline in the popularity began to be seen around 1920. For the sake of profitability, postcard publishers began using materials and processes of lesser quality, producing more general views in less intimate scenery. More importantly, after 1918, changing lifestyles, including the telephone, were major factors in the decline of postcards. The golden era of postcards was over by the end of World War II.