Laborie, Léonard <br/><br/>
“By Airmail”: The Semiotic Origins of International Airmail Services in the 1920s 

 -  2008.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> The transportation of mail by air, i.e., airmail, should be considered more as an organizational than a technical innovation. It is not simply a matter of making planes fly, but of incorporating them into a complex system of mail collection, transportation and distribution across different areas. The exploit of flying in itself is not enough: to satisfy users, it has to be scheduled, safe and appropriately linked up with the rest of the mail delivery process. Cooperation, in the literal sense of joint operation of a network by those concerned, is the only solution: post offices on the one hand and airline companies on the other have to collaborate closely, and therefore to communicate. In the 1920s, airmail services became established thanks to the build-up of a common area of meaning that combined institutions and signs. Ultimately, mail-planes were kept aloft by an infrastructure of paper.