7 The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time 7

locomotive cowcatcher. It was Babbage who first sug-

gested that the weather of years past could be read from

tree rings. He also had a lifelong fascination with keys,

ciphers, and mechanical dolls.

Sir Rowland Hill

(b. Dec. 3, 1795, Kidderminster, Worcestershire, Eng.—d. Aug. 27,

1879, Hampstead, London)

R

owland Hill, knighted Sir Rowland in 1860, was an

English administrator and educator and the originator

of the penny postage system. He is principally known for

his development of the modern postal service, which was

subsequently adopted throughout the world.

The son of an English schoolmaster, Hill was inter-

ested in problems of teaching; for about 15 years he

operated schools in which he emphasized student

democracy, rigid self-discipline, and intensive teaching.

His wide-ranging interests included printing, astronomy,

mathematics, and transportation.

Hill’s proposals for postal reform were formulated

between 1835 and 1837 and were based on the notion that

revenue derived from taxes should increase with the growth

of the population and national prosperity. In 1837 he pub-

lished Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability,

which is justly regarded as one of the most important mile-

stones in postal progress. Based on an exhaustive study of

the cost structure of postal operations, it demonstrated

conclusively that conveyance charges were an insignificant

factor in the total cost of handling a letter. The then current

intricate charging scales based on distance were shown to

be irrelevant: they inflated operating costs by requiring a

host of clerks to apply them and to prepare complicated

interoffice accounts. He also realized that another major

item in the current cost structure—the collection of money