Engineer, inventor and stamp designer Sir Sandford Fleming was born January 7, 1827.

Sir Sandford Fleming, civil engineer (b at Kirkcaldy, Scot 7 Jan 1827; d at Halifax 22 July 1915). He was Canada’s foremost railway surveyor and construction engineer of the 19th century and a distinguished inventor and scientist.
Sir Sandford Fleming | The Canadian Encyclopedia

 

Among his lasting contributions to the world was the creation of standardized time zones.

He suggested a 24-hour clock for the whole world with a central time and every other place changing an hour later or earlier based on 15 degrees of longitude. He wrote a pair of papers on the subject that he presented in 1879, 1881, and 1884, to an ever increasing audience of significance. By 1929, every country in the world had adopted the time zones.
Sandford Fleming Biography – Interesting Engineering

Fleming was also Canada’s first stamp designer. He was behind the creation of the 3 Pence Beaver. Technically it was issued by the Province of Canada in 1851, 16 years before Confederation but it’s considered the first official Canadian stamp.

The first three stamps from Canada, in order, were the beaver, Prince Albert and Queen Victoria. Yes, Canada put a toothy rodent on a stamp before the Queen.  

Sir Sandford Fleming designed the original 3 pence beaver, in collaboration with Canada’s first postmaster general, the Honourable James Morris and engraver Alfred Jones.  The stamp is notable because it was the first postage stamp  in the world, to use an animal. Up to that time, the usual images depicted coat of arms, royalty, and heads of state, not tree gnawing rodents. The Right Honourable Rodent, known by his formal name Castor Canadensis or North American beaver, played a crucial part in the development of Canada and is one of the country’s national symbols, which is why Fleming chose the noble beaver. 

The new red stamp came in large sheets with no perforation marks. Each stamp would be carefully (hopefully) cut out by post office clerks, which led to some pretty wonky margins around the illustration. A total of 250,000 stamps were released on April 23, 1851. It was reprinted in 1852 and 1853, producing a number of subtle colour variations (from red to deep red, orange red, brown red and vermillion) as well as re-entry errors and a rare cracked plate. It takes a careful eye to distinguish all the variations, Add to that, forgeries abound, which is why a stamp with large, clean margins is so valued. In April 1859 the 3 penny was re-issued using perforations, doing away with the need for scissors. This also led to a cottage industry of people carefully snipping off the perforations to make their 3 penny stamp look like the original, far more valuable imperforates. A clean, broad margin was a good indicator that the stamp hadn’t been altered. 

Archives Canada holds an outstanding copy of the original essay proof. The clarity of the scan allows us to see many of the fine details that are lost in the printed stamp. Among the features often blurred out of existence is the happy little sun in the background that is barely visible in the stamps. The fine details in the waterfall are equally obscured by the printing process. 

 

You can read a bit more about Canada’s love of the beaver  https://bittergrounds.com/behold-the-terrifying-creature-castor-canadensis-a-very-brief-look-at-the-canadian-beaver-in-design