The civic numbers, alphanumeric codes assigned by the Municipalities that uniquely identified access to a building, were introduced for the first time by European governments between the ‘600 and’ 700, with a very practical purpose: to tax citizens and easily find soldiers to be enrolled. First, in fact, the houses were recognizable only by heraldic signs and symbols. With the increase in the population and urbanization, for the control of the city it became necessary to census not only people but also the buildings, and so each door received an identification number. The turning point came in 1790 in the United States for census needs: for the first time the roads were organized with equal numbers on one side and odd on the other, a system that is still the most used in the world today. It is therefore not a question of the invention of a single person, but a system born for degrees in different countries and historical moments, driven by practical needs.
The organization of buildings in antiquity
In antiquity, in urban agglomerations both small and large, There was no real need to classify homes: life was organized for royal – in ancient Rome – or neighborhood, village, sestiereor with the names of the street, of the intersection or the area of the city. Those who lived in the same area knew each other, specific functions and activities were carried out in a specific area – market, shops, financial activities, etc. – the social classes themselves were divided into specific areas. Who had to find someone, he knew where to look for himIn short.
It was only in Middle Ageswhen religious communities, brotherhoods and landowners began to structure the real estate management of lands and buildingsthat the need to adequately organize the collection of taxes and taxes with more organized systems: therefore the Heraldic signs for homes and commercial activitiessometimes even accompanied by numbers.
When civic numbers were born
When the large land and real estate properties were confiscated and the entities that managed them suppressed, the urgency of clarifying was born: what did the state have now possessed, where it was and what value did he had? Meanwhile, the cities grew dramatically: in London the first identification numbers appeared in the early 1700s, in Paris around 1720 and, in the same period, in the Jewish ghetto of Prague. They were not yet real civic numbers, but numbering systems that indicated the building overall. The real turning point came in 1770: in the Habsburg Empire, Queen Maria Teresa ordered to number each door to facilitate the search for young people to be enrolled. The officers arrived in the villages and, following them, a painter traced a number on each door: so no house was skipped.
The practice spread rapidly and, in the following decades, the civic number also reached London, useful to control even political dissidents, and then Paris and Madrid. In the nineteenth century, with the birth of the postal system, the civic numbers were already in use but were perfected to make delivery easier, a process made even more efficient by the invention of the stamp.
Who invented the division of civic numbers on par and odd
The most popular numbering and system system in the world, that in buildings with progressive number equal from one side and odd on the otherhas been experimented rudimentary already by 1779 from a French journalistwho wanted to quickly deliver his almanac, a newspaper called Almanach de Paris. Thus, in the night, he had written numbers on one side and odd of the other in the streets belonging to his directization.
It seems that the method has been adopted officially in 1790, promoted by the same city administration, a Philadelphiain the USA, On the occasion of the first census of the populationwhen the Colonel Clement Biddle – who was a friend of George Washington and fought in the American war of independence – he proposed to separate the numbering to order homes, for make it easier for data or research of any kind.
