Letter

Initially, a letter was a handwritten text message on paper or another medium (clay shard, sheet of parchment or a piece of birch bark ).

At present, a letter also means a message created and / or transmitted electronically (for example, by e-mail ) or via SMS ( mobile phone ). Such a letter may also contain not only text, but also various multimedia elements (for example, images, video and audio recordings ).

• Letter of credit
• Audio
• Letter of thanks
• Credentials
• Hybrid mail
• Business letter
• Ordered letter
• Letter of marque
• Love letter
• Open letter
• ^[1]
• Letters of happiness
• Letter of introduction
• Criss-cross letter
• Message in verse
• Letter of intent
• Letter of recommendation
• Transmittal letter

• The largest letter in the world is parchment 10 m long and 7 m wide, sent by the Persian shah ^{[ specify ]} Turkish Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in the 16th century. This message is stored in the Ethnographic Museum of Ankara ( tour. Ankara Etnografya Müzesi ) ^[2] .
• The smallest letter measures 23 × 36 mm and was discovered in 1983 at . The letter that went through all the stages of postal processing has a stamp used for franking in accordance with the current tariff and canceled by the postmark of July 21, 1883 ^[2] .
• According to the Guinness Book of Records ^[3] , the message of Abraham Lincoln , written by him on January 8, 1863 and addressed to General John McClernand in Memphis , Tennessee , which was sold for 000, was long considered the most expensive letter in the world in New York at Christie's auction in 1991. However, on April 3, 2008, an even more unprecedented amount was paid at the Sotheby 's auction in New York for another Lincoln letter written in 1864 in response to a request from 195 boys and girls for the abolition of slavery . The letter went under the hammer for 3.4 million dollars in a private American collection ^[4] .
• More than one case is known in history when letters were delivered over long distances in a very short time, impossible even with modern means of sorting and transporting mail. So, a letter sent on August 6, 1849 from London , was delivered to Switzerland , to Neuchatel on the second day. A letter sent in 1905 from Oxford reached Frankfurt in three days, although even now such a journey can take four to five days ^[5]
• Over the history of writing, letters were written on a wide variety of media. The Museum of the Federal Border Guard Service of the Krasnodar Territory , a branch of FSUE Russian Post, has a letter written on a magnolia leaf and dated 1954 ^[6] . This letter in 2009 was named among the 15 winners of the All-Russian campaign “Exhibit for the Postal Museum” ^[7] .
• In the USSR, from the 1950s to the 1990s, recording studios had the “ sound letter ” service, recorded on a flexible record and sent to the addressee in a special mail envelope with the words “Sound letter. Do not bend ” ^[8] .

• Large philatelic dictionary / Under the general. ed. N.I. Vladinets and V.A. Jacobs. - M .: Radio and communications, 1988 .-- 320 p. - ISBN 5-256-00175-2 . (See articles starting with Letters , as well as Written Correspondence , Letter Carrier and Letter Sorting Machines .)
• Knabe G. S. Antique writing // Tree of knowledge - the tree of life / G. S. Knabe. - M .: RGGU, 2006. - S. 502-525.
• Nechaev V. Letters in Civil Law // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907. (Retrieved December 2, 2010)
• Letters as a kind of literary works // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907. (Retrieved December 2, 2010)
• Philatelic Dictionary / Comp. O. Ya. Basin. - M .: Communication, 1968 .-- 164 p. (See Letter , Letter Carrier , and Letter Sorting Machines .)