When was the envelope invented

If printing is required on all four flaps as well as the front, the process is referred to as "printing on the flat". Eye-catching illustrated envelopes or pictorial envelopes, the origins of which as an artistic genre can be attributed to the Mulready stationery - and which was printed in this way - are used extensively for direct mail. In this respect, direct mail envelopes have a shared history with propaganda envelopes or "covers" as they are called by philatelists. Consequently too the high cost of buying these high capital investment machines has to be factored into the operating costs of any enterprise which engages in producing printed envelopes, and so their line of business is the production of very large runs of the order of 50, and upwards.

Depending on the size of the run this can entail the use of an entire web or reel. 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.

The ancient Egyptians protected missives by rolling up the papyrus scrolls. Because paper was so expensive, for many centuries letters were usually just folded, sealed and sent that way.

But by the 17th century separate envelopes appeared in Spain and France. And what a relief that must have been. We have some English friends who still insist on using those tissue paper aerograms dating from the s.

You write the letter, fold it, lick some gummed flaps, and suddenly your letter has turned itself into an envelope. The trouble is, our friends keep having afterthoughts, and they write all over the margins.

No matter how carefully we cut open the flaps, we lose vital information. As in, "Yes we'd love to have you visit, but we'll be out of town after the first of.

The early envelopes were often sealed with wax impressed by a signet ring to prevent the wrong people from reading them. For a really important letter a gallows mark could be put on the cover, meaning that it had to be delivered under pain of death. That seems to me an empty threat. If you didn't receive it, how would you know?

And since letters sometimes took months to deliver, the derelict postman would have absconded long since, anyway. Benjamin explains that you might actually have been able to trace it, as each wayside kept a record of passage.

It was Louis XIV of France, that master of the dramatic flourish, who popularized the use of a cover to ensure the privacy of letters, according to Benjamin. Louis had his secretary cut out forms with a template and fold and paste them to make envelopes for his communications to his court. In America, Benjamin Franklin is known as the father of our postal service, hiring on in under the postmaster general for the Colonies.

Franklin organized distribution, designed pigeonholes for collecting letters that were bound for the same place, and set milestones along the post roads, for in those days postmen were paid by the mile. It cost Samuel Adams, for instance, 11 pence in to send a letter from Boston to Philadelphia.

It is all too easy to veer off into a discussion of stamps here, or of the letters themselves, but I am determined to concentrate on the subject at hand. It just occurred to me: letter writing is coming back these days via e-mail and faxes, but what about the envelopes?

In the virtual world, free of floods, fire and puppies, there is no need to protect your letter from damage. They later became a novelty item, used by the wealthy to add a touch of panache and grace to their invitations and letters. They passed on to become the standard means by which letters and documents were packaged for delivery via mail.

Today, envelopes fulfill all of these prospects at the same time. There are security envelopes specifically designed to protect documents within from prying eyes and even from electronic scanning. There are direct mail envelopes of every size, weight, color, pattern and texture imaginable for use in invitations, advertising, marketing or even to add a personal touch to communications.

There are envelopes with cut out windows, with illustrated designs and logos and more. Modern envelope machines can crank out well over 1, pre-glued envelopes every minute and place them in boxes of anywhere from to 1, for distributing all over the world. Over billion envelopes are produced every year. One thing is certain: even with light-speed communications via the Internet, envelopes and direct mailings are still here, and are here to stay.

If you are curious as to how custom-designed envelopes can help your direct mail business, we are ready to help. Read a bit about our company , and get in touch with us today for more information or to find out how we can design envelopes to suit your exact needs, at a price that will not break the bank. Find out more about the interesting history of envelopes in part 2. Hi, I'm Karen! I've been in the industry for 18 years and can't wait to share my perspective on all things direct mail.

I'm currently the Digital Marketing Manager at Letter Jacket Envelopes and deal with tasks from managing the website, facilitating conversations with customers, and much more! We are positive you will love your envelopes! If you are not completely satisfied with your purchase, please contact us and we will make it right! Skip to content. The History of Envelopes. July 14,