Before email there was V-Mail
In World War 2, Allied troops sent and received a lot of mail. So much mail it became a headache for military authorities to handle the huge quantities. But nobody wanted to impose overly strict limits on mail, since being able to communicate with loved ones at home was a massive prop to the morale of troops. In 1941 the British came up with a solution. The idea was to photograph letters, send the negatives to an area close to the intended recipients and then print them out again. The reduced-size negatives took up a lot…