USPS enlarges microscopic world on 20 stamps Aug. 10 at Great American Stamp Show

By Charles Snee

On Aug. 10, the Great American Stamp Show in Cleveland, Ohio, will provide a stage for the United States Postal Service’s 20 new commemorative stamps featuring stunning photographs of various diminutive organisms and other biological objects as seen from a magnified perspective.

Working with a philatelic canvas of just 1.2 square inches per stamp, seasoned USPS art director Derry Noyes selected a visually arresting array of 20 photos by eight photographers. Their names are listed in the Postal Service’s technical details for the new nondenominated (66¢) Life Magnified forever commemorative stamps.

An official Postal Service first-day ceremony is planned for 11 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 10, the opening day of the Great American Stamp Show, at the Huntington Convention Center, Hall C, 301 Lakeside Ave., in Cleveland.

Luke Grossman, senior vice president for finance and strategy for the USPS, will act as the dedicating official for the ceremony, which is free and open to the public.

Those planning to attend the ceremony are encouraged to register with the USPS. Attendees are not restricted in the number of additional guests they may invite, according to the Postal Service.

“For hundreds of years, scientists have held deep fascination with making the invisible elements of our world visible,” the USPS said in a July 6 media advisory announcing the stamps. “Development of more refined and precise microscopes over several centuries brought smaller and smaller components of life into focus.”

Banknote Corporation of America of Browns Summit, N.C., one of the Postal Service’s two contract stamp printers (the other is Ashton Potter [USA] Ltd. of Williamsville, N.Y.), printed a total of 32 million stamps in 1.6 million se-tenant (side-by-side) panes of 20 arranged in five rows of four stamps each.

Microorganisms and other biological features are illustrated by row in the following order:

Row 1: red blood cells, a macaw parrot feather, a human hair tied in a knot, and moss leaves;

Row 2: arranged diatoms (unicellular microalgae), freshwater protozoans (single-cell organisms), cirri (legs) of an acorn barnacle, and a moth antenna;

Row 3: front foot of a diving beetle, mouse brain neurons, starling bone tissue, and moth wing scales;

Row 4: a zebrafish, mushroom gills, the tongue of a freshwater snail, and a blue button (a small marine organism comprised of a colony of hydroids);

Row 5: mold spores, barnacle legs, flame lily pollen, and the surface of an oak leaf.

To narrow down the number of photos to be shown, Noyes turned to an excellent source of pictures captured with electron microscopy: the annual Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition.

Noyes picked the winning photos of 2020 and 2021 to appear on two of the Life Magnified stamps.

The 2020 picture of a zebrafish is seen on the first stamp in the fourth row of the pane, and the last stamp in the fifth row features the 2021 image of the surface of an oak leaf.

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