2020 55¢ Innovation – Biomedicine

Value:  55¢ 1-ounce First-class rate (Forever)

Issue Date:  August 20, 2020

First Day City:  Bellefonte, PA

Type of Stamp:  Commemorative

Printed by:  Banknote Corporation of America

Printing Method:  Offset, Hot Foil Stamping

Format:  Pane of 20

Self-Adhesive

Quantity Printed:  14,000,000

  In the last several hundred years, few fields have advanced as far and as fast as medicine.  We went from little-to-no understanding of the human body to having the ability to correct some of the most serious medical conditions.

Many people consider some of the most important innovations in medicine to be the big fancy x-ray and MRI machines.  However, those machines would not be much help without innovations like penicillin and anesthesia.  We would also be in a much different place today without the discovery of germs and advent of better sanitation practices.

Again, all of these would be for nothing if not for the innovation involving magnification by special glass.  This idea made possible the invention of important tools like the microscope.  Being able to see the germs and viruses attacking our cells changed the medical field forever.  Without the microscope, modern diagnostics would be impossible.

Thanks to all the amazing advances in medicine, the human life expectancy has nearly doubled since the 1800s.  It is no wonder the United States Postal Service included biomedicine in the set of five Innovation stamps released in 2020.  Without medical innovation, many important inventors throughout history might not have lived long enough to make their mark.