So many different kinds of perforations...

A collector talked to me about perforation gauges the other day on the phone, after complaining about today's self-adhesive stamps.  And it got us talking about the history of perforations.  So I dug deep through the internet to provide our readers a little about the history of perforations.
The world’s first postage stamps, issued by Great Britain in 1840, were without means of self-separation. They are called imperforate or, abbreviated, “imperf.” Such stamps had to be cut apart with scissors or some other means. Hence it is unusual to find “imperfs” with nice margins on all four sides.  Shortly after the first stamps were issued, the idea of separating each stamp from each by means of rows of small holes between the rows of stamps was introduced.

The story was told that a local had purchased some of England’s first stamps and, under the influence of a pint or two, sat on the curb where he produced a pin and began to poke pin holes between his stamps so that he could tear them apart. The idea worked so well that he took his stamps back to the Post Office and pointed out his great discovery. Later, it is related, the British Government provided this gentleman with a substantial sum of money for his invention. 

DIFFERENT TYPES OF PERFORATIONS

There is, of course, a very apparent difference between a stamp without perforations – “imperf.” – and one with perforations – “perf.” – and one can readily understand why early collectors made such an important point of that difference. However, in this day of collecting it is somewhat difficult to understand why so much emphasis is placed on the different gauges of perforation.

The fact remains that for United States stamps, which have been perforated by machines producing various gauges of perforations, there is often an enormous difference in value running from a few cents to as much as several hundred dollars for what, to all intents and purposes, is the identical stamp except for the gauge of the perforation. The same situation applies to most foreign issues but until the advent of “The New World-Wide Postage Stamp Catalog” few collectors in the United States were aware of this fact. This catalog lists and gives values for practically all perforation varieties of all stamps of the world.

Likewise our printed hingeless stamp albums – provide spaces in which to place each stamp – with perforation varieties for the stamps of the United States and other countries. The matter is important, however, and especially so as one becomes advanced in his or her collecting interests.

COMB PERFORATIONS
Now let us take into consideration the various kinds of perforations and the methods by which they are applied to stamps. The original perforating machine, one that is still in common use for the stamps of some countries, is the “comb” perforator. As the name implies, this is an instrument shaped like a comb. The pins that do the perforating are arranged in a long row to fit the width of the sheet of stamps and the extensions of shorter rows of prongs are arranged so as to fall between each stamp, like this:

Stamps in sheets are stacked in quantity and the comb is punched through the top row. Then the comb is moved to the next row and so on. The comb does not always line up exactly with the preceding row so that this style of perforation can often be identified in any vertical pair of stamps.  However, it has never come to my attention that these variations in the placement of the comb have received any important consideration among collectors. Usually the punches, or prongs, that make the perforations are round in shape. But there are also some that are oblong, or lozenge, in shape or perhaps others. Collectors refer to these odd shapes as “hyphen hole” perfs., or “Lozenge” perfs., and “square” perfs.

Photo by Bureau of Engraving & Printing

Modern perforating machines, as used in the production of US stamps, are sprocket wheel punches which punch continuous rows of holes between the stamps. When the stamps are produced on rotary presses in a continuous strip, the sprockets are small wheels that make a continuous row of perforations in one direction.

Then, a little further along on the machine, the sprockets are on a long shaft running the complete width of the sheet to produce the cross row of perforations at each turn of the wheel. Naturally this is a complicated device requiring careful coordination with the printed stamps so that the rows of holes will fall at exactly the correct place between the stamps. Nowadays this coordination is accomplished electrically by what collectors call the “electric eye” shown above.

This is what gave the idea of the electronic perforation gauge to the people at SAFE.  And hence the Perfotronic was born.  The Perfotronic uses an electric eye of sorts to measure the perforation in 1/4, 1/10 or 1/100 increments in a fraction of a second.  We produced a short video of the Perfotronic so you can see how it works for yourself.