[Reprinted with permission from the March 1, 2004,issue of Linn's Stamp News.]
[Copyright 2004 Linn's Stamp News, Sidney, Ohio 45365, USA]
Stamps on the Internet
By William F. Sharpe
Wobbe Vegter of South Africa has a web site called Cyber Philately. The
site is located at http://wvegter.hivemind.net.
Figure 1 shows the well-designed start
page of the site. Included in the lower-right corner is a rather unflattering
image of Bill Gates on a stamp issued by Palau. This 33¢ stamp is part of a
20th-century Visionaries pane of 12 issued June 30, 1999 (Scott 512).
Figure 1. The opening page for Wobbe Vegter's web site called Cyber Philately.
The site features Vegter's exhibit called "From Abacus to
Internet," but there's much more there. You can find complete articles
that Vegter has published and links to other computer-related stamp sites as
well as those offering a history of computers.
There also are links to sites with glossaries of computer and philatelic terms.
The 60-page "From Abacus to Internet" exhibit was shown at the Stampex 2003 show in Johannesburg, South Africa, and received a vermeil award. Figure 2 shows part of the index
page for the exhibit.
Figure 2. Part of the index page of Wobbe Vegter's "From Abacus to Internet" exhibit.
In the exhibit, Vegter traces the development of computational tools
from the mechanical age through the digital age, and he finishes with the
Internet, offering a final "Quo vadis?" (where are you going?)
section.
These pages suggest some of the recent developments, such as the Mars Rover, computer-controlled transportation, complex surgery and electronic messages.
Vegter concludes his exhibit with a 1963 quote from John F. Kennedy: "Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all."
When viewing the exhibit on Vegter's site, you can either use the navigation cells (previous, home and next) to move through the exhibit or click on one of the text entries in the four parts of
the exhibit to see particular pages.
Even with my high-speed Internet connection, I found the various pages of Vegter's exhibit a bit slow to load at times, but the results are worth the wait.
Vegter uses worldwide stamps to illustrate his exhibit to good effect, and he has laid out his pages in an attractive manner.
Figure 3. This page dealing with and showing stamps that have an
Internet theme is part of the "From Abacus to Internet" exhibit.
Figure 3 shows one of the exhibit pages featuring the Internet. An
Internet address is included on each of the three stamps shown in the top row.
The page even includes a quote from Al Gore about the Internet.
One of Vegter's articles included on the site discusses the Year 2000 problem (Y2K), which related to the potential difficulties arising from computer programs that kept track of only the last
two digits of a year and what would happen at the end of 1999.
He explains the nature of the problem and illustrates the article with a number of stamps issued to commemorate the event. The most colorful of these stamps, in my opinion, is a se-tenant
(side-by-side) Indonesian pair of stamps that depict a nasty-looking bug, as shown in Figure 4. "Bug" is computer jargon for an error. Indonesia issued its Y2K Millennium Bug stamp pair May 2, 1999 (1847).
Figure 4. Indonesia's Y2K Millennium Bug stamp pair issued May 2, 1999.
Vegter also explains a bit of family history at his site. The black shape at the top right of Figure 1 depicts a "vegter," or night watchman, an occupation immortalized by Rembrandt.
In medieval times, the vegter would patrol the streets of the city, lantern in hand, protecting citizens from bandits and other unsavory elements.
The formidable great-coated figure would be armed with a "goedendag" (literally "good day"), known in English as a "morningstar." With a spiked iron ball mounted
on a heavy staff, it was sufficient to tame even the most unruly of the characters operating under cover of night.
****
[ Reprinted with permission from the March 1, 2004,issue of
Linn's Stamp News. ]
[ © 2004 Linn's Stamp News
, Sidney, Ohio 45365, USA ]