Albert Einstein worked at the Federal Office of Intellectual Property in Berne from 1902 to 1909. The result of his researches in the swiss town were to become world famous. In his paper “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”, Albert Einstein investigated the basic principles of physics such as time, simultaneity or length in relation to the “Principle of Relativity”.

In order to celebrate the fact that the Theory of Relativity was formulated in Berne – the capital of Switzerland– in 1905 the Swiss Postal Services decided to create a commemorative stamp for the anniversary of the formula E=MC2.

A competition between a group of 5 designers was organized. Only a few photographies of Einstein in his Berne period where distributed with the assignment that the formula had to be present on the stamp. JBL won the research and could then create the stamp, the first day cover and its postage canceling.