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The History of the Envelope

By: Mark Bartley Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Envelopes have been in close attendance at some of the most moving, dramatic and momentous events over history; both public and deeply personal. Silent and polite witnesses to breathless, tearful declarations of Oscar success, exam result hysteria, news of tragic events from the front, job refusals, marriage acceptances, of golden Willy Wonker dream weaving, dear Johns, locks of hair, faded photographs, wills, won'ts, screeches of premium bond ecstasy and for James Bond's eyes only. They could certainly tell a tale or two, with almost the clarity of the letters that they are made to loyally guard and protect.

In order to gain a more rounded and fuller appreciation of the envelope – to better understand their role and grant them the full admiration that they deserve, it is necessary to examine the envelope's origins, to discover and document its heroic role throughout history.

So what came first, the envelope or the stamp? By a long, long way the envelope predates the postage stamp with the first use of paper envelopes recorded as far back as the 10th Century. Throughout the 15th and 16th Centuries basic postal systems were implemented as state monopolies by various governments, crowned heads and dictatorships. According to historians, letters were mailed, "under cover or envelope." with messages was enclosed in a paper that was folded and sealed. It was the responsibility of senders had to take care of their own "enveloping," and cut the paper as required.

Nothing really changed for the next three 300 years. King Charles I established the first State postal service for the conveyance of private letters in England and Scotland and Frenchman M.de Valayer attempted to establish a postal system in Paris offering to deliver any letters placed in his post boxes as long as they were enclosed in the envelopes that he had on sale. Simple wrappers by design, but containing a printed receipt for postage paid, the pre-paid concept was almost 200 years ahead of its time. Neither scheme gained the traction they deserved, largely, it is suggested, on account of other parties who felt commercially threatened by the new innovations. The lack of any sustainable form of official postage service certainly didn't do the evolution of the envelope any favours. In their modern form though, paper envelopes have been in existence for a relatively short amount of time, in fact from roughly around the same time as the Penny Black stamp was launched. Right up until 1840 when new tessellating technology was patented to help automate the production of them, all envelopes continued to be handmade, individually cut to the appropriate shape out of an individual rectangular sheet. By 1845 a steam-driven machine had been invented that not only cut out the envelope shapes but also creased and folded them as well. This led to the mass production of machine-made envelopes, and gradually the value of handmade envelopes on the market gradually diminished. Though invented in 1851 by John Dickenson, it would take another 50 years though for pre-gummed envelopes to go into mass production.

According to experts it was William Irwin Martin who in 1876, working for the Samuel Raynor & Company in New York published the Stationer's Handbook and created the standardised commercial sizes of envelopes we are familiar with today. Then they were were numbered simply from 0 through 12 though modern stationary buyers would be more familiar with their descendents such as C4, C5, C6 and DL.

William Irwin Martin was certainly onto something. It's estimated that over 400 billion envelopes are manufactured worldwide - annually.

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About The Author: Evaluating something as simple as stationary envelopes online can have serious financial implications when you are buying millions of them. Let Mark Bartley's informative advice guide you through the evnelopes available by giving you some background to the choices available.