CANCELLATION

Cancellation

The first adhesive postage stamp was the Penny Black, issued in 1840 by Great Britain. The postal authorities recognized there must be a method for preventing reuse of the stamps and simultaneously issued hand stamps for use to apply cancellations to the stamps on the envelopes as they passed through the postal system. The cancels were handmade and depicted a Maltese cross design. Initially, the ink used was red, which was difficult to see against the black stamps, and the ink color was subsequently changed to black.

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cancellation

Noun

  1. The act, process, or result of cancelling; as, the cancellation of certain words in a contract, or of the contract itself.
  2. The operation of striking out common factors, in both the dividend and divisor.
  3. A postmark that marks a postage stamp so as to prevent its reuse.
  4. In United States intellectual property law, a proceeding in which an interested party seeks to cancel the registration of a trademark or patent.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: cancellation
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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