When was envelope invented

The result of this is that over the last years or so the most common way of producing printed envelopes commercially has been to overprint on machine-made envelopes. Needless to say, only the largest of companies have a need for 50, or more envelopes at any one time.

The drawback is that although printing on the face of an envelope is reasonably straight- forward, an envelope is not a flat sheet of paper and so if printing is required on one or more flaps this incurs higher cost as specialist printing skill is required.

For small businesses with a need for relatively low volumes of printed envelopes, even if a case is made for a batch customized with no more than the company logo on the face, there is seldom justification for the added expense of printing on the flap side too.

However the volume-related barrier to the use of customized envelopes by small businesses was subsequently lowered in the lateth century with the advent of the digital printing revolution which saw the introduction of PC printers.

Although designed primarily to process flat rectangular sheets these could be adjusted to also overprint on the face of rectangular machine-made envelopes in spite of the extra thickness - given suitable office applications software such as Microsoft's Word.

Then right at the end of the 20th century, in , the digital printing revolution delivered another benefit for small businesses when the U. Postal Service became the first postal authority to approve the introduction of a system of applying to an envelope in the printer bin of a PC sheet printer a digital frank uncanceled and precanceled or stamp delivered via the Internet.

With this innovative alternative to an adhesive-backed postage stamp as the basis for an Electronic Stamp Distribution ESD service, a business envelope could be produced in-house, addressed and customized with advertising information on the face, and ready to be mailed. The fortunes of the commercial envelope manufacturing industry and the postal service go hand in hand, and both link to the printing industry and the mechanized envelope processing industry producing equipments such as franking and addressing machines.

They are all four symbiotic: technological developments affecting one obviously ricochet through the others : addressing machines print addresses, postage stamps are a print product, franking machines imprint a frank on an envelope. If fewer envelopes are required; fewer stamps are required; fewer franking machines are required and fewer addressing machines are required.

For example, the advent and adoption of information-based indicia IBI commonly referred to as digitally-encoded electronic stamps or digital indicia by the US Postal Service in caused widespread consternation in the franking machine industry,as their equipments were effectively rendered obsolescent and resulted in a flurry of lawsuits involving Pitney Bowes among others. The advent of email in the late s appeared to offer a substantial threat to the postal service. By letter-post service operators were reporting significantly smaller volumes of letter-post, specifically stamped envelopes, which they attributed mainly to replacement by email.

Although a corresponding reduction in the volume of envelopes required would have been expected, no such decrease was reported as widely as the reduction in letter-post volumes. Although as regards email developments there is a substantial threat of "technology replacing tradition", this is offset by the equal reasoning that the Universal Postal Union is an international specialized agency of the United Nations, and a source of revenue for government.

Consequently any deterioration of domestic and international postal services attended by loss of revenue is a matter of governmental concern. Order Now! Get an Estimate Upload a File. Digital Copies. These clay envelopes protected important documents such as deeds, mortgages, financial accounts and letters, and recipients opened the envelope by breaking the outer layer of clay.

Before the invention of paper in AD, alternative sources of protection for delicate documents were cloth, animal skins, or vegetable parts. However, the widespread availability of paper in medieval times proved to be a game-changer. Instead, they were simply an extra sheet of paper folded crudely around the document, and sealed with wax.

Interestingly, wax seals were initially the privilege of royalty and bishops, who had their own unique design which would be imprinted on to the hot wax, often using a ring.

As with so many things, the Industrial Revolution was a game changer for the envelope, and this was when they took on the form we know today. In , engineer Edwin Hill and inventor Warren De La Rue were granted a British patent for the first envelope-making machine, although these were still not as we know them today. Benjamin Franklin is considered the founder of the postal service in America. He set up distribution cases with pigeonholes where letters could be dropped off at common destinations for pickup.

He also laid milestones on the roads, which helped the postmen because they were paid by the mile. During this time, the cost of postage depended on the number of sheets and then extra for the envelope, which only the wealthy could afford. This was then changed to weight and distance, making it affordable to more people. By , a letter could be mailed coast to coast in the US for only three cents per ounce. The demand for envelopes grew after this universal postage, and folding every single envelope manually was time-consuming.

British inventors Edwin Hill and Warren De La Rue solved this issue in by creating and patenting the first mass-producing envelope folding machine. While their machine could produce sealed envelopes quickly, it was still hand-operated. Hawes invented the first automatic envelope folding machine that could produce 2, envelopes per hour.

Then, in , Henry and D. Wheeler Swift remastered a design from James Green Arnold and created the self-gumming envelope machine.