During the Second World War, the only way that soldiers could communicate with home was by letter. There were no emails or smartphones, and very few chances to use a telephone land line. The government had serious problems in maintaining a postal service for forces stationed abroad. They preferred to send mail by air, but space was very limited. Letters to and from the Near and Far East were taking 3 to 6 months to reach their destination by the only other method – by ship around the southern tip of Africa.

The Post Office realized that the solution could lie in the microfilm system that had been used for record-keeping by banks and other businesses since the early 1930’s. Thus the “Airgraph” was invented. The word became a trademark of Kodak Ltd., who controlled the process.

Letters were photographed at the sending end, then the negatives sent by air to the destination, where they were printed and delivered. The volume and weight of the film were less than one fiftieth of the letters, so many letters could be transported quickly at a much smaller cost.

That first shipment of 70,000 letters was from Cairo. About 350,000 messages were sent during the first month of the service and over 500,000 in the second month.

The letters had to be written on special forms designed to fit in the processing equipment, and the maximum length of a message was only a few hundred words. The form had to be handed in at a post office. It was then checked first by censors, and then by sorters. By the end of the War, over 330 million Airgraphs had been processed. When cheap airmail postage to troops was introduced early in 1945 the use of Airgraphs declined rapidly and the service ceased on 31st July 1945.